Shakedown
by Bainaku
Summary: #53:  Cleave.  "...the first cut's always the worst and this second slice is almost buttery, a streak of heat from chin to sternum."  Series of 100 Tokka one-shots.
1. Schooling

**Commentary: **Uhm, I love Tokka. Since I _also_ love writing quickfics based on random bits of vocabulary, I thought I could, you know, have the two merge. I'll do as many of these as I can. I'm not promising a hundred—I mean, I know some people do that—but let's say… at least ten.

This one is set not long after _The Serpent's Pass_.

Hope you enjoy it!

**Words: **3,500

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**Word ONE: Schooling**

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_Wsssshk. Wsssshk. Wsssshk._

Rocking to and fro on the balls of her feet, Toph lets the sand wallow away from her and sways to the sounds of the nearby ocean. Her world ends where it begins, a giant blur of noise and pressure and—and fear.

Toph is afraid of the ocean—of her world's end. In the water, she is both blind _and _helpless.

Footsteps behind her, muffled, slipping. _Skkk _as fingernails scrape the bark of a leaning tree. "Toph?" asks Katara. The bell of the Waterbender's voice drifts across the space between them, and Toph can see the smile in it under the press of her heels. She rocks harder, forcing the hard pads deep into the sand, and Katara's smile brightens briefly before it snaps out of her perception altogether.

"Sugar Queen," acknowledges Toph. Her face is still pointed toward the ocean. A breeze blows in across its waves and throws the scent of salt against her. She licks her lips to taste it too.

Katara drifts up alongside her, slightly to the right. Her elbow brushes Toph's. "You wanted to meet me here." A hitch in the other girl's voice—a pause. Concern leaks over her words like the water she is so adept at bending. "What's up?"

There is an unspoken _Why here? _in Katara's question, but Toph's ears are better than most and she hears it. She smirks. The expression holds for a few seconds. Wobbles. Sobers. Her insides boil and the ocean sloshes and fear, fear, fear gnaws at her, but—

"I need a favor," says Toph, aiming for nonchalance. She rubs her thumb over the nails of her other fingers, _sfff-sfff_. The dirt beneath those nails sings to her.

"A favor," attempts Katara dubiously.

"Echo, echo." Toph turns, putting the waves at her back. Katara's outline fills her head, all smooth slender strength and small curves. She is a walking stream. "You gonna offer your services or not, Sweetness? I haven't got all night, you know."

Toes buried in the sand, Toph sees Katara smile again—no, it's bigger. She's grinning. The expression eats up her whole face and Toph imagines that it's doing what people who see with their eyes call _shining_. "Consider my services offered," Katara agrees. She continues, "…I think. What can I do for you, Toph?"

Aaaaand silence.

Despite spending the whole day planning this, rehearsing the request over and over in her head, Toph finds the well of words in her throat has suddenly gone dry. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. Glub-glub-glub. _Damnit._

Katara shifts closer. "Wow," she observes. Her sleeve trickles against Toph's wrist. "Is it that bad?"

Pulling her lips back from her teeth, the Earthbender sends her breath out in a hiss. She grates, "Teach. Uh." Her hands clench into fists and the sand around them stirs up small whirlpools. "T-teach. Me."

Katara is so close now that Toph feels her blink. "Teach you what?" she coaxes.

Toph tries to—no, _wants _to be angry at her friend because she's not a child and she doesn't need to be spoken to like one, but—

"Toph?"

Katara's voice is so soft, so gentle, so—so lacking in pity and so _loving _that—

"Teach me to swim," Toph blurts. Heat crawls over her face and builds a hut on it and has a family there. She tacks on miserably, "Please."

_Ta-tmp. Ta-tmp-tmp-tmp-tmp-tmp-TA-TMP-TMP-TA-TMP-TMP_. That's what Katara's heart sounds like as she digests Toph's words—as she realizes just what it is the blind Earthbender wants.

"Are you sure?" Katara pursues. "I know it's hard for you—"

"It's harder," Toph cuts in, "knowing that if I fall in some—some stupid wimpy puddle, or… or _something_, I'm gonna drown in it because I don't know how to fling my arms around all special-like and—"

She stops abruptly because the ocean is sucking the sand away from her just like it tried to suck away her life before, and horror makes her stomach do a queer, sickening flip-flop-_splut_. Urgh. That's terrible.

"And," she resumes, hand splayed over her belly in an effort to quell its bubbling tantrum, "you know, dying would be kind of craptastic, so…"

"So you want me to teach you to swim." Katara's voice sounds about as gooey as tar. Toph's blush, fading before, roars right back into place.

"There's an echo out here, seriously," she mutters, scrubbing her palm over her burning cheek. "But yeah. Teach me how to—uhm. Not die. In the water." Manners, Toph. "Please," she says again.

"Echo, echo," replies Katara. She softens the tease with, "You got it." She chuffs her knuckles over the other Bender's shoulder and Toph leans into the touch.

Between the surges of the ocean's unending gurgle the Earthbender admits, "You're okay, Sweetness."

Five minutes later, ankle-deep in the surf with her legs planted in a wobbly V and her hands clenched over Katara's own outstretched fingers, Toph fiercely recants her statement.

"I hate you," she seethes. Froth nibbles merrily at her bare legs. "I hate you, Katara. I hate you. I _hate _you. I. _Hate_. YOU."

Katara laughs and Toph briefly considers embedding a few bits of shale in the Waterbender's more tender areas. Then she remembers oh, right, she's in the OCEAN, and the sand beneath her feet keeps moving and shifting and her head is full of half-formed muddy pictures of—of…

She assumes—hopes—all those little things floating in the water around them are fish.

"Just a little farther," Katara murmurs. Giggles eek from between her bitten lips. "I've got you, Toph. Come on."

"You've got my _hands_," Toph snarls. She tightens her grip to emphasize this. The frail bones in Katara's fingers creak.

Wincing, her friend acknowledges, "Yes—and the rest of you. If need be I can bend all the water in this cove. So just calm down and trust me a little, okay?"

Eyes wide, sweat dripping from the tip of her nose, Toph tries. Hard. Really, _really _hard. She even scoots one foot the tiniest bit forward. But then something prickly caresses her thigh in the most intimate way and, with a shriek, the shorter girl abandons all pretense of participating in this happy horseshit and hurls herself back toward sweet safe _sturdy _dry land.

"Oh for—!" Katara snorts. She sways—_wsssshk_, Toph hears—and a loop of seawater rises to encircle the Earthbender's waist. It brings her, bobbing and bitching the whole while, back to its waiting mistress.

"There are—there are _things _in here!" proclaims the younger of the pair, her normally even tone ratcheted into a panicked screech. "One just, ugh—it _touched _me and it had these, these little _scratchy bits_ on it—!"

"Your hands," interrupts Katara. The loop of seawater dissolves and an arm replaces it, sliding snugly into place around Toph's ribs. Toph can feel the Waterbender's heartbeat throbbing into her armpit, _ta-tmp-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp_. "Hold them out."

Toph does, petulant. She regrets it almost immediately, because Katara drops the scratchy scary thing that touched her leg before right onto her vulnerable palms.

"_Yeeech_!" Toph, ever the pragmatist, tries to throw it. Katara's arm tightens, though, and draws her in close. Her mouth finds Toph's temple and for the first time ever, the smaller girl actually _feels _her friend smile. Seeing it through her feet and knowing its shape on her skin are two very different things.

Sunrises are probably different in the same way, Toph realizes.

Katara soothes, "It's a plant, that's all." Her fingers press over Toph's, urging the other girl's hands closed. The thing—the plant—makes a sound like _squick-squick _between the Earthbender's calluses. It's rubbery and spongy and more than slightly awful. "It's called kelpweed."

"It's disgusting," decides Toph, fervent.

Katara's lips twitch and she breathes into the low furl of Toph's sweat-soaked bangs, half-giggle, half-sigh. "Funny you think so _now_, after eating it in stew almost every night this week."

As though the ocean and the constantly moving ground under her feet weren't making Toph sick enough.

"…you're joking." _Please _be joking.

_Smk-smk _goes Katara's mouth as she mimics the way Toph slurped down her supper the previous evening. "Oh, not even."

"_Hrrghughll—_"

"If you throw up on me," threatens the taller girl, "I'll let go of you."

Toph stiffens: and seriously, Earthbenders know the intricacies of stiff things, so she ends up getting pretty straight and rigid and pointy. "You wouldn't," she hisses.

"No," Katara agrees, "I wouldn't, but don't throw up on me. And _calm down_." Those two words shake in their solemnity. "Here." She plucks the plant from Toph's hands and tosses it sidelong. _Spack_—it lands somewhere far away and probably sinks back beneath the water, where it will wait to fondle the thigh of the next blind defenseless Earthbender unfortunate enough cross its path.

In the next instant, Katara's hand returns to Toph: folds over her hip.

"Now," she insists, "you asked me to teach you to swim, and I'm _going _to teach you to swim. So"—she barrels on before Toph can protest—"_first_, you need to learn to float."

Toph asks Katara rudely just how she is supposed to accomplish that.

Of course, Katara is eager to explain. She also proves to be the sort of teacher that favors physical demonstrations—Toph _would _be so lucky to find that out firsthand. Curling her fingers shamelessly in Toph's hair just behind the tight black bun, the Waterbender pulls the smaller girl's head back and begins to kneel. They sink together toward the waves.

"Relax," she orders. "Let your limbs go loose."

Toph's shoulders touch the water and she is abruptly everything _but _loose. Her spine arcs and her body bends away from the ocean's lapping surface in a trembling U. It takes every bit of temerity and strength she has not to scream or claw at the air. She bites out, heels digging into the slippery sand beneath the waves in a last-ditch effort to stay aloft, "What are you _doing_, Sweetness?"

"Showing you how to do that _float_ thing we were just discussing," Katara assures her friend, and pulls a little with one hand, pressing with the other. Toph's feet leave the sand. Her world winks into blackness and—

_Ta-tmp-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp-wssssshk-wssssshk-ta-tmp-tmp._

Water and Katara's heartbeat rush into her ears, both undeniable, both steady, both maddening. Arms stuck out like stalactites, Toph growls a word that makes Katara's eyelid spasm.

The Waterbender corrects through gritted teeth, "It's not _that_ bad."

"You know," Toph replies, tone high and clipped and two shades short of utterly petrified, "you're right. You're absolutely _right_. It's ten SPIRITS-DAMNED times _worse_—"

"Toph." There's something then about the way Katara says her name. Something stonelike. Something rocky. Something hard. Toph recognizes and respects it immediately. "Stop"—and Katara takes a calming, steadying breath—"being such a _baby_."

Ouch.

The waves churn. Katara doesn't apologize and Toph understands she doesn't deserve an apology anyway, because she asked for both the lesson and the reprimand.

"Fine," the Earthbender manages approximately thirty seconds later. She's still scared, but she's angry too: determined to prove to Katara that she _isn't _a baby. "So. I'm—I'm _floating _here. Right? Except you're—"

She frowns, stormy.

"You're—uh. Touching my butt."

A pause.

"_Why _are you touching my butt?"

"Believe it or not," Katara relates in a dramatic _oh_-I-am-so-wise voice, "swimming lessons sometimes involve grabbing the _great _Toph Bei Fong's butt." And then, words all sincerity, "I'm helping you float. If you want me to let you go, though—"

"Hold tight to those cheeks, Sweetness," Toph demands. "_Real _tight."

Once she has resigned herself to being groped by weird ocean plants and her friendly neighborhood Waterbender, Toph admits—in the privacy of her own head—that swimming isn't really so bad. It lends her a weightlessness she never has on land, and while she is blind here, well and _truly _blind, it's sort of soothing to just bob around and let the currents and eddies take her with them. Katara's a good teacher, a kind teacher, a _patient _teacher. She manages to convey to Toph that sight, whether by eye or by sole, isn't what matters when one is submerged in liquid.

"You just have to _listen _to it," murmurs the taller Bender, guiding Toph's limbs through practice strokes. _Wut-spack-wut-spack _and the younger of the pair is getting it, just maybe, propelling herself forward on top of the waves. "You just have to _feel_ it. And if you do those things, Toph, you'll know where the water's going. Follow it and you'll be okay."

It helps that they're still in the shallows. Katara's feet are stirring up sand, fans of the stuff drifting and dissolving and reforming again all around them. There's too little of it to let Toph _see _and she can't grip enough with her feet to try to bend it either, but its presence comforts, encourages her. Soon she doesn't need Katara's hands to stay afloat. The sand and the waves buoy her.

And when they go deeper and the ocean floor is too far away to feel even with her legs stretched straight down, the pale girl flails her arms and kicks her feet, listening and feeling, and—

She's okay, just like Katara said.

Two hours later, Katara half-drags Toph from the ocean. They sit shoulder to shoulder at the base of a dune, thoroughly soaked. The Earthbender trembles, exhausted; by the slump of her spine, Katara is tired too. _Plip-plip-plip_ sigh droplets of seawater, pattering down into the warm sand around them. It's taken repetition, persistence, and once even a pinch in a precarious place, but now?

Now Toph can float. _And _tread water.

Because she must be feeling all motherly and proud over her newest pupil's accomplishments, Katara drops an arm around Toph to squeeze her. The air leaves the Earthbender's lungs in a growled _uffff_.

Katara compliments her, "You did very well today."

"Yeah, yeah." Try as she might, Toph can't get her voice above a mumble. Her limbs don't want to listen to her either—they wiggle like overcooked noodles, useless. Shivering, she leans against Katara and closes her eyes.

_Wsssshk-wssssshk-ta-tmp-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp._

"Thanks, Sweetness," manages the Earthbender at last.

_Haaaah _as Katara draws in a breath to say something—but then she doesn't offer even a word, because it isn't necessary, and that's just fine by Toph. Supported by her friend, lulled by the sounds of the ocean and Katara's steady heartbeat, the new swimmer dozes.

She comes awake with a start, though, after a startling and hopeful realization.

"Hey," she pursues, "_hey_. Sugar Queen." Seizing Katara's arm, Toph shakes it. She demands, "Do swimming lessons _always _involve butt-touching?"

Katara chuckles groggily and agrees, "If the person learning to swim is as apt to sink as you, Toph, then butt-touching is pretty standard. Why?"

"Oho," demurs Toph, "just checking to make sure you weren't trying to molest me, is all." She pats Katara's arm. "Don't you worry about it, yeah?"

Unbeknownst to Toph, Katara rolls her eyes. They drift into quiet again. They drowse. Katara drools into Toph's hair—Toph slobbers on Katara's neck.

Aang, who is the one to find them later, takes one look at the mess they make and opines, "Yurg."

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**Two days later…**

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_Skkksh. Skkksh-wtt. Skkksh. Skkksh-wtt._

Ambling into the clearing with her arms crossed behind her head, Toph tosses a grin sideways over the flickering campfire. "Snoozles," she greets the warrior sharpening a stick nearby the low flames. "What's shakin'?"

"I," Sokka proclaims, brandishing his makeshift spear at her, "have just crafted an _amazing _weapon." He rattles it against the edge of his boot, well aware his companion can't see the result of his labors.

Toph reasons, "Sounds like a stick."

Twitching, Sokka rattles the sti—err, _spear _a little harder. "No, no—see, it's a _javelin_—"

"I don't _see _anything, Meathead."

"Ri-_iiiiight_. Here. Allow me to... _illuminate _things for you." As much as it pains him to release his wondrous creation so soon after its conception, Sokka drops the spear earthward. With the tip of his boot he rolls it demonstratively to and fro. A small cloud of dust rises—so do his eyebrows. He pumps them. "Soooo?" he wheedles. "You see…?"

"A pointy stick," Toph clarifies. Ignoring Sokka's immediate and vehement whines of protest, she leaps over said stick and _flump_s down next to its maker. "What were you planning on doing with it?"

Heaving a long-suffering sigh—spirits, no one around here _appreciates _his talents—Sokka prods Toph's ankle (carefully) with the spear. He admits, "I was gonna go hunting with it. You know. For _meat_."

"Ah-huh." Toph inserts a finger into a nostril and begins to excavate. "What kinda meat?"

"Boarcupine," lusts Sokka. Under her toes Toph feels his heartbeat escalate, _bmp-bmp-bmp-da-bmp_, so different from his sister's. Only the boomeranging moron would get in a twist over food. "It's a regional delicacy," he tells her. "I've always wanted to try i—"

She sniffs, removes the finger, and rubs it on the ground between them, creating a small trench there.

"—aaaand you don't care."

"Nope."

"…'course not." Grumbling, Sokka looks down at the spear in his hands. This time it's only a stick to him, and he breaks it easily over a knee and tosses the two pieces into the flames, where they split and crackle and burn. A grin plays over Toph's face in the firelight.

They sit together for several minutes, companionably quiet. Toph picks her nose a few more times.

At last, though, when she has deemed the caverns in her sinuses clear, she jabs Sokka in the ribs and murmurs, "Katara's teaching me to swim."

"Aang told me he thought so. Said he found you two on the beach the other night." The tribesman shifts, _scct-kk_, and his hip hits Toph's. The vibrations from his movements tell Toph that he's looking at her and rubbing the spot she elbowed at the same time. "She insisted, huh?"

"Wrong." Polishing her fingertips on the edge of her tunic, Toph revises, "I asked."

Sokka makes a sound in the back of his throat that expresses surprise and pride simultaneously. It conveys _good for you_. Because saying such a thing aloud would be condescending, the youth keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't ask _why_ Toph has chosen to learn to swim either.

Sokka's just good like that.

Ten of his heartbeats later, Toph allows, "We were going to do a lesson tonight, but…"

But Aang and Katara are off gliding somewhere, their giggles soft and sweet on the wind. Toph might be blunt, obnoxious, brisk, obstinate—but cruel she is not, and she refuses to interrupt their fun when they've damn well earned it.

Besides, Toph's got a pretty good brain cooking in her hard little head, and she's pretty sure that—

"I can teach you." Sokka bounds to his feet, _drmm-drmmm_, and spins in the clearing to face the Earthbender. "I mean, hey! I'm no Waterbender, but I"—and he thumps his chest, sending pleasurable fizzles up through Toph's feet, ankles, thighs—"happen to be a _champion _swimmer. In fact, I taught Katara all she knows."

—she's got him.

"I dunno," hedges the girl, digging her toes into the soft silt nearby the fire. While it's warm and wonderful against her skin, it's nothing like Sokka's _hssssh-haaaah _breathing or his excited pulse. She's delighted to know she has more impact on him than the idea of roast boarcupine. "I mean, I'm not that great at it yet—"

His hands on her hands, tugging her upright. They're so unique, his fingers, chapped in some places and smooth others: strong and supple, like branches. They bend around her where it matters. "All the more reason I should teach you!" he declares. "You won't be the best 'til you _learn _from the best!"

"Such reasoning," she grouches, but he doesn't hear her. He whisks her away from the fire—_krrk-cch _the flames whisper, a hot goodbye—and across the scrubland toward the ocean's heady throb.

She lies when he asks her how far her lessons have progressed. "I'm still pretty bad at floating," she manages, trying her best to sound sheepish. "On my back and stuff. I sink."

They're in the water now, the waves cool and calm around them, the wind looping through the dunegrass in a faint _saaaaa_. Sokka's hands close on her hip and shoulder, stars of heat.

"No problem," he says. He dips her—efficiently and immediately and with a quickness that makes Toph gasp. _This is not a Katara lesson_, his fingers tell her as they slide beneath her. _This is a Sokka lesson._

But as he assures her, "I've got you, Toph—don't worry!" and his palm comes to rest on a very particular place on her person, the Earthbender only grins heavenward and thanks the spirits that Sokka doesn't mind being her teacher.


	2. Navigation

**Commentary: **Here's a _real _quickfic—short but fun, I hope! Set post-series, though I pray that's obvious.

**Warning**: Innuendo! I have upped the rating to T.

**Words: **500

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**Word TWO: Navigation**

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Blindness aside, Toph is an excellent map-reader.

She's good at it because she treats the task like her Earthbending, and like Sokka treats his swordplay. It's an extension of herself, a way to lengthen her perception through another medium. She traces her fingers over the lines, the scars, the ridges and drops into them, spreading her awareness out over the story those things tell together.

Pressing her thumb down with particular solemnity, she asks, "This?"

Sokka cants up on his elbows to see. "Ooh, that one," he observes. Toph moves her thumb a fraction aside and adds the slide of her index finger, rubbing the crescent-shaped mark beneath it. The tip of her tongue pokes from between her pale lips; her eyes narrow in instinct that not even seventeen sightless years have been able to quash.

"What does it say?" she asks. Before he can answer, she surmises, "A battle—maybe on cliffs? Hmm… there were spears…"

"Close," he agrees, and wraps his fingers over hers. He presses her touch harder against the mark. The map dips and her knuckles rasp under his palm, the only mountains he will ever move. "Don't you remember? You totally kicked ass."

She grins and flicks her eyes up—not at him, no; she never _looks _at him—and light from the glowing candle nearby their arms runs in a ring around her silver gaze. Her bangs shake and her chest puffs as she laughs, a little growling sound. "Oh _yeah_. The suspension bridge. The bandits! The guy who's missing his left nut thanks to m—"

"Yeah, yeah," agrees Sokka, unable to muffle his wince. "Like I said, you totally kicked ass."

"You bet I did." But Toph doesn't need reminders of her, uh, badassery—she's already fully aware of it, and so she loses interest quickly. Sokka watches as she resumes exploring the map. Delving her curious fingers into its secrets, peeling away its layers one by one: that's Toph, so shameless, so certain. There's an eagerness in her face hot enough to make him grin, and when she unearths the map's core and grasps at it, he sucks in a breath—

"Well now." The pad of her middle finger ghosts right, left and she smirks at him, her mouth a white flash, a chuckle bubbling in her throat. "What's _this_?"

"Oh c'mon," Sokka begs. "Don't make me say it."

Toph's chuckle turns into a giggle, and the world is just _so _dangerous when she giggles. "Don't make me leave it alone, then," she chides him, and makes to lean away.

"Rapidly changing topography!" Sokka manages. "That happens"—is she looking at him? Her eyes are on him, her grin softening, and it _feels _like she's looking at him—"when Earthbenders like you get involved, Toph."

Toph stills. Slants her eyes. Presses her palm flat against the map: rather, against his belly and the belt beneath. Sighs.

"Terrible joke or not," she allows, pleased, and tugs that belt again, "that's _completely _true."


	3. Eulogy

**Commentary: **Another one! Little longer than the last, set post-series. I should also note that none of these quickfics are meant to link up. They can—and should—all stand alone.

**Words: **2010

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**Word THREE: Eulogy**

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As far as disasters go, this one is pretty standard.

They converge, the four of them, to aid in the excavation of a collapsed tunnel in a mountain pass near Ba Sing Se. Just like old times they sit on Appa's back together, laughing despite the sure toil of the task ahead. "I haven't done this in six years!" shrieks Toph, goodnaturedly grouchy. She maintains, "And I didn't miss it!" But both her arms are wrapped tight about the one of Sokka's, her face with its fierce grin thrust into the wind, and it's clear to all those watching that the blind Earthbender is lying through her teeth.

The sun pours down on them and they relish being united again: not that they've avoided each other's company since the Fire Lord's defeat, of course. Aang and Katara rarely part ways, and while Sokka tends to spend the majority of his time at the South Pole, it's not unusual to see him pop up as far north as Omashu. A nomad in her own right, Toph journeys wherever her feet can carry her. They rendezvous in taverns to clink cups (Aang and Katara ) or mugs (Sokka and Toph); they meet at inns on birthdays purposely, and completely by accident on the roads crisscrossing the continents. At Zuko's behest, they stifle coups, disband pirate fleets, and dispel lingering notions of war across the world's four nations.

Still, rarely do they have the luxury of the nostalgia that surrounds them today. The clouds drift around them and the sky blazes so blue it burns. The breeze brings with it Sokka's jokes mixed with Toph's accompanying snorts, Aang's soft cackle bouncing buoyantly between Katara's contagious giggles. The world is alive and peaceful and they are heroes: they are friends. They are whole.

Joining the relief efforts at the tunnel sobers their jubilant mood considerably. Toph, with her special way of seeing straight through solid rock, pinpoints both the locations of survivors trapped in the cave-in's pockets and the bodies of those not so fortunate. Cupping the westerly winds in his fingers, Aang sends air down through the mountain's crevices to those as yet unreachable. Katara stands hip to hip with the healers and calms what ills she is able; her brother, using Toph's directions as his guide, wiggles into tight spaces to pry free travelers who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It still astounds some that the Avatar and his friends will endeavor to aid those who belong to the Fire Nation: will creep too into tight cracks after bandits and thieves and ne'er-do-wells. Murmurs ripple through bystanders—only a few are stupid enough to dish out criticism, and they tend to badly stub their toes on the slope's jagged terrain. Skeptics aside, the Avatar's band reassures and provides solace to those who must survey the cave-in and hope their loved ones emerge from it intact.

Six hours after their arrival, the tunnel is mostly clear in that there are only corpses left to prize from the rubble. The sun sinks behind the mountain, stretching its orange fingers across the slopes. In the fading light an earnest celebration begins in the name of lives lost and lives saved. The Avatar, his wife, his brother, and the woman he perceives as his sister stand at the fringes of that celebration at first, the former two fidgeting like teenagers, unsure how to react to the festivities.

"Come on," Toph insists when she can stand the rabbit-leg thump of Aang's heart no longer. "Go _dance _with them, yeesh. Do some fancy footwork and call it homage to the dead. Trust me, that's what all _those _people are doing." She motions vaguely in the crowd's general direction, where bodies are moving, hands clapping. "That's what they want you to do too."

"_Dance_?" wonder Aang and Katara together.

"Hey, _schyeah_. It helps them get out all that sadness, that hurt. Besides, what better way to celebrate someone's life than with a party?" Betwixt Aang's pale elbow and his spouse's bronze shoulder, Toph beams. "Betcha it calms the restless souls of the living _and _the departed." She flaps a hand. "Or something."

"Spirit world mumbo jumbo," Sokka contributes, trying to sound solemn. A grin twitches the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, celestial voyage chi chakra-chakra blah," agrees Toph, and jerks her hips sideways. "Let the dead _live a little_." Her backside bumps Katara's; the ground beneath the Waterbender's feet slopes a bit. Destiny and a dutiful blind love guru send her sprawling into Aang's arms.

Aang spares Toph a weak glare and Katara sticks out her tongue, but Toph can't see either of those things and, well, she's right anyway: the dead are only dead when treated so. Aang takes Katara's hand to walk with her into the circle of firelight. There they join the survivors, the mourners, the revelers in a dance of remembrance that sends a rumble through the mountain that took away their fellows. They all think that maybe, if they just pound their feet hard enough, the spirits of those fellows will follow the sound out into the starlight, fallen passageways, dark tunnel, and death be damned.

Toph and Sokka are the only two who avoid the merriment. Hair a tangled mess, grime smeared over her chin, the Earthbender slides down against a rock at the mouth of the tunnel and smirks, head angled in the party's direction. "Sounds lively, huh?" she ventures.

"Like it should," affirms Sokka. Flopping down next to her, he tacks on, "Stupid tunnel." While to anyone else the comment might sound too light for the situation, Toph can hear the sober sentiment behind her best friend's words. He's sorry for the people who died here—sorry he didn't come in time to help them, to pull them free when they were still breathing.

Toph punches him in the arm. "Oi," she insists, "don't blame the tunnel. Or the mountain. It moved. The people moved too—on, to a different place." Her breath sighs out and there's no mistaking that she shares some of his sorrow. But she contends, "That's just how things work, Snoozles. _Everything_ moves eventually."

Sokka grunts and looks at her sidelong. His mood is improving—it always does when he talks to Toph. "Not like you to wax poetic," he murmurs appreciatively.

"Best take notes," she concurs. One of her feet taps in time to the dancing party's rhythm, _bm-tppa-bm-tppa-shff-shff. _"Probably won't happen again."

Out of the corner of his eye Sokka can see her toes flexing midair—can see her shaded smile and what looks like a red thready sunrise crawling up over the spires of her hair. "It's a shame," he tells her, and continues without really thinking about it, "you're pretty."

It isn't until her foot stops its tapping that he realizes what he's said.

"Pretty, uh—_good _at it, I mean. You know. Waxing poetic! You should do it more often," he flounders. "Sage Toph, Mistress of the Mysteriously Musing Mists. Can't you just imagine—"

She looks away from him. Not that it matters much—she couldn't see him to begin with—but there's something jarring about the determined way she directs her face elsewhere, her features falling into the shadows such that he can't mark them anymore. Her jaw tightens. The firelight draws a bloody pucker down her cheek and Sokka can't quite peg why, but suddenly he feels like the world's biggest asshole.

"Yeah," Toph resumes, tone lacking conviction. "Me, a sage. Fff." And then, grumbled, "Misty, mysterious—whatever."

Quiet falls between them. It's not awkward so much as it's painful, and Sokka doesn't like not being able to see Toph's face. The absence of her grin and her body's accompanying stillness pose an eerie similarity to the lifeless forms he tucked into shrouds today, enough that his mouth dries up and his skin prickles. Jiggling his fingers together, he searches for words to bridge the gap he's managed to cleave straight down the middle of what he and his best friend have here in the dark.

Toph beats him to it. "Hey," she wonders, still turned away from him, "why aren't you out there with them? Dancing?" Subtext: _go the hell away, Sokka. I'm mad at you. _

An idea occurs to Sokka next, an abrupt firework in his brain. For the second time in so many minutes, his mouth acts before his mind.

"I'm not out there because you're not out there," he says, pitching his tone petulant.

It has the desired effect. Toph bristles like a wounded penguin-seal. "Well don't feel _sorry _for me or anything," she snarls. "I don't need your _pity_—"

"I mean," Sokka interrupts, "I'm not dancing because _you're _not dancing. There's no one else I wanna boogie with and since you're here, I thought I'd just sit here too." For good measure, he adds, "I figured a sage would get _that_, Toph. Sheesh."

Beneath them the ground vibrates with the force of the ceremony nearby, and Toph slowly shifts her face back to Sokka. Her mouth is a small severe line, its corners drooping; she blinks hooded eyes and she's never looked so blank, so bewildered. One of her dark eyebrows climbs high on her forehead and she says, "You don't want to dance with anyone but me." It's not quite a question, but she presses her foot to the earth and waits expectantly.

Waits for him to lie.

"Nope, sure don't," Sokka replies. He's surprised—though not much, when he's perfectly honest with himself—to find that he's not fibbing even a little bit.

Seconds later and just for an instant, both of Toph's eyebrows threaten to disappear into her hair. Her expression falls to one of open disbelief. Muscles in her jaw work; she swallows hard and Sokka hears it, a lump disappearing down her throat. Her foot shivers and he knows she's aware of his sincerity.

But a huffed, "Huh!" is all she offers him before she turns away again.

"Hard to get," he accuses her sulkily.

She provides him a rude hand gesture in response. He wonders—not for the first time—just how she figured out the intricacies of that particular signal without the benefit of normal sight.

"So-_ooooo_," he ventures after a few tense moments, "that was an _invitation_, in case any socially-impaired people were wondering." He finishes, voice soft, "You gonna move or not, Toph? As I recall, someone told me recently that everything has to eventually."

Under Sokka's thighs the ground gives the faintest of tremors; he blinks and Toph is standing over him. _Thunk! _Her foot comes down between his legs and a resulting peg of stone spanks him squarely in the buttocks. With a yelp he leaps to his feet, limbs akimbo.

Hard little hesitating hands grope at his own. Once she's got them, Toph doesn't seem to know what to do with them and holds them slightly away from her, sawing her bottom lip between her teeth. Her shoulders stiffen. All these years gone by and she's still the shortest of their group—her brow barely brushes his chin.

Sokka smiles.

"Well," his best friend hisses, "get on with it."

Sokka doesn't need to be told twice. Before Toph can change her mind, he pulls her into the whirl of bodies around the fire that's grown steadily larger since sundown. She stumbles and he catches her; he trips and she pulls him up again. They try to dance and it doesn't work, not at first, because there are too many footsteps and too much noise, but then—

"Here," Sokka offers, and lifts her such that her feet rest atop his. He shuffles and takes her with him; he bends and she barks out startled laughter, synched to his waist. The sound dies quickly and she scowls at him. Falters. Gives in.

"Faster," she insists, a whisper. Subtext: _I don't want to dance with anyone but you either, Sokka._

He complies.

Blind and bound, they move together. Finally.


	4. Reunion

**Commentary: **Hoooo, real quick one here! Snow stories are fun!

**Words**: 1,000

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**Word FOUR: Reunion**

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Aang vaults from Appa's back into the heap of snow surrounding the village gate. With a delighted shiver he reaches skyward and receives Katara's hands, helping her down next. Together they turn to beam at the warrior who was before a black speck on the snow rushing to meet them.

"Guys!" Sokka whoops. He loops his arms around each part of the pair and drags them in close, crushing them tight to his furs. Aang wheezes and Katara laughs, though the sound comes out faintly strangled. "You're _late_!" their captor scolds. "I was up at _dawn _yesterday looking for you, you know."

"We had a minor distraction," Katara soothes her brother once she's managed to squirm away from his embrace. And then: "You? Up at dawn? Gran Gran made spiced blubber jerky, didn't she?"

Easy to read as an open book, Sokka provides a guilty-as-charged grin and shrugs. "There may or may not have been jerky involved. I refuse to disclose matters so sensitive."

"Speaking of sensitive," Aang cuts in, "my arms. Sokka, uhm—you're squeezing off their blood supply. Could you, I dunno, maybe loosen your grip a little?"

"Such a manly man," sighs the warrior. He does release Aang, though, hitching his arm up to join its fellow in a familiar hoop above his wolf-tailed crown. His eyes pin the new arrivals in their eager curiosity, snowflakes on his lashes, a grin marking his mouth. He demands, "What was the minor distraction, huh?"

Right on cue, a small head pops up over the rim of Appa's saddle. It informs Sokka, its teeth clattering, "This place is _really_ spirits-damned cold."

_Awhoooo, _breathes the arctic wind, reaffirming the statement. Appa's whuffling exhale weaves through that wind and the faint sounds of the villagers speckle its empty spaces, _pikk-pkk, pikk-pkk_. Sokka stares, his jaw slack, his eyes huge.

"Uh, hello?" the head's owner wonders. Her hands appear, worrying the saddle's edge. Her fingers are red in the frigid air, their tips trembling; her breath steams in a cloud below indignantly flared nostrils. "Where's _my _warm welcome?"

"TOPH!" Sokka's shriek cracks the ice up to two leagues distant. He hurls himself up the sky bison's flank and spills into the saddle, boots spraying snow. He sprawls across the waiting woman's lap and she jerks, surprised, but not even she is fast enough to avoid the arms he clamps about her waist. Rearing back on his knees to swing the newcomer high, Sokka cries again, "Guys! Look! IT'S TOPH!"

In his grip the woman struggles, cursing. She's cold in his hands because she's still garbed the way Aang and Katara found her: like an Earth Kingdom wanderer, her vested tunic and breeches so green that Sokka might as well be holding spring between his fingers. "Let go, you furry idiot!" she roars. She adds, "Put me down!"

The expectant man's face creases, conniving. "As you command!" he agrees in a victorious crow. Rolling her in the crooks of his elbows, he leans over the saddle's border and drops his squirming bundle unceremoniously into the snow below.

It swallows Toph in a great white gulp. Katara yells, "_Sokka_!" in her most horrified big-sister voice, shaking with laughter and fear at once; Aang claps a hand over his mouth. As an enraged howl emerges from the Toph-shaped hole in the tundra, Sokka slides down from Appa's shoulder wearing a triumphant sneer, hands braced on jaunty hips. He leans over the small fissure and peers into it, careful. (Aang privately thinks the tribesman is apt to get his head torn off anyway.)

Sokka stretches his arm down to Toph.

"C'mon, you asked for it," he reasons to the quivering woman he pulls from the snow. "Literally."

"And you asked for _this_," Toph replies. She shivers and stomps her heel on the packed ground underfoot. What would normally be a tidal flow of rock is just a weak ripple now: a single pebble flies from a nearby snowdrift and _pecks _off Sokka's temple.

"Fierce," he observes, smug. That's one good thing about living on a glacier—the massive distance between the ice's surface and the soil so far beneath it limits Earthbending considerably. Toph, he thinks, is almost powerless here. He taunts, "Keep that up and you might eventually bruise me."

He realizes too late that the blind Earthbender isn't _just _a blind Earthbender. She's a warrior too, just as capable as him, just as dangerous, just as clever. She's adapted to see through her feet despite fate's gift of dead eyes—so too has she learned how to kick ass in lieu of cracking canyons open under her enemies.

This is demonstrated as one little white fist rockets into Sokka's shoulder with an audible _crrk_. He staggers sideways, lists, slips and the flat of Toph's other palm is waiting for him.

"Eventually, huh?" she asks.

That palm collides with his face. She slams a handful of fresh snow straight up his nose.

Sokka crumbles at her feet like a tower with its foundation blown, snuffling and gagging. Through watering eyes he blinks at Toph: at her shoulders so sharp against the round horizon of the world; at her persimmon cheeks, chapped already for the pole's relentless chill. She seems to know she's being watched. Like any glorious overlord, she smirks, folds her arms, and allows herself a single sinister chuckle.

_Awhoooo,_ the wind murmurs again. Her dark hair flutters in its fingers like a pennant.

"Missed you, Toph," Sokka tells her happily.

Her smirk gentles and it doesn't seem odd at all to Sokka that he has to be on his knees for Toph to touch him kindly. The contact is quick, a chuff of her raw knuckles against his hair's grain—warmth in a place where nothing _else _is warm. "Missed you too, Snoozles," she admits.

Then she's gone, letting her two other friends lead her into the village.

Scrabbling frantically at the frozen ground, Sokka yelps, "Hey, wait for me!" and rushes after her.


	5. Preservation

**Commentary**: Despite saying that none of the one-shots in this story would link up, I'm thinking of continuing this one. Go figure! What do you guys think I should do? =) Set post-series.

**Words: **1950

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**Word FIVE: Preservation**

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Sokka assumed he would go back to being a mostly normal guy when Aang did the whole Avatar thing and yanked the world back from the brink of ruin.

But _no_. Heroic reputations are sharp as the sword he swung once and fickle in their benefits, Sokka realizes two days after the third anniversary of the end of the Hundred-Years War. With Zuko all prettily poised in the Fire Nation palace, his lemurbat-crazy sister stuck in prison for eternity, and his creepy father out of the picture too, things technically should be going great for everyone. Peachy. Fantastic. Reign of peace and all that.

_Reputations_, Sokka thinks to himself as a pellet from a bandit's slingshot whizzes past his ear, don't die with wars. Reputations precede the people who have them and follow them around too, and the whispered rumors that made the Avatar's gang fearsome during the whole Ozai conflict have only shifted now, after the fact, into one giant collective pain in the ass. _Sokka's _ass, to be precise.

See, Katara and Aang got off lucky. Serenaded by the _twang-twtttt _rhapsody of arrows raining down around his sheltered spot behind a tree, Sokka can't help but feel a little bitter about that. As reluctant as they were to admit it at first, both were pretty much born to be diplomats. They might still be kids but, well, they _did _save the world. For that reason, governments throughout the four nations clamor for their attention and advice incessantly. Their reputations gave them a hand up: carved them a path they were both (eventually) willing and happy to walk. The Avatar and his girlfriend split their time between being lovey-dovey with each other and being lovey-dovey with representatives from society's various cultures. They work hard. They like it.

Sokka and Toph aren't so fortunate. Like Aang and Katara, they are expected to be_ big _people now, delegates responsible for spreading the message of goodwill hither and yon. Goodwill they've got, sure—leadership qualifications, no problem.

The only minor issue is that Sokka never really wanted to be_ this_ popular. Head of the Southern Water Tribe someday—yeah, he bought in to that. Friend of the Avatar? Great! Nothing wrong with helping out the random tattooed bald kid now and again! Savior of all humankind? Not bad, not bad.

But world's best tactician? He's not sure the parka fits and frankly, he's getting tired of throwing open the windows every morning, no matter where he goes, only to find the sill crusted with palm-deep messenger hawk poop.

And _Toph_, oho—_nowhere_ is there a person who sucks as hardcore at diplomacy as she does. Her tendency to architecturally rearrange administrative buildings according to her frustrations has gotten her banned from Ba Sing Se's court for, as one nobleman put it, "ten lifetimes." The fact that she could give a ratmonkey's buttock about said banishment puts her at constant odds with her parents, who still yearn for a proper daughter they can dress in frills and parade before the public eye (without her picking her nose, her ears, her feet, and so on).

Toph doesn't _want _to be a diplomat anyway. Leaning slightly around the edge of the tree that's keeping him from becoming a human pincushion, Sokka reflects that he has no idea what Toph would _like _to be: he only knows what most people expect when they hear of the legendary blind Bei Fong.

She's the greatest Earthbender in the world—the _only _Metalbender in the world. At sixteen, she's simultaneously the Earth Kingdom's most formidable military asset and scarcely a finger-width over five feet tall. She's the wicked little warrior who refuses to deny a challenge. She's a bar brawl on two feet; she's a single dirty joke away from pure perversion. She's his best friend. She's—

Struggling. Surprised, she yelps and curses somewhere nearby as her opponent gets inside her defenses. Sokka can't see her, but the sounds of the scuffle reach him and the ground heaves in a grumble of commiseration. Whatever's going on, it's making her mad.

She's not lucky, no, not like Aang and Katara. Because of her reputation, Toph is _vulnerable_.

Sokka bares his teeth in a grimace and swings himself from behind the tree, bringing his newest boomerang down on the skull of the bandit closest to him. Reputations are _terrible_: call someone the best or greatest at something and out flock the ego-bruised critics who are determined to disprove the sentiment. While Sokka's got his own personal flock of messenger hawks and the unrealistic expectations of the generals behind them, trouble trails Toph. She can't even buy bread without getting harassed.

Sometimes that trouble is a good thing. Toph likes a rumble tournament as well as the next Earthbender—she delights in friendly, fierce competition. Her hobby of creating safe pathways between the kingdoms includes extensive travel, and she relishes beating in the brains of the idiots who think to ambush her on the road with intent to take away her title, her prestige. "Keeps me on my toes," she told Sokka once.

Too bad not everyone who ambushes Toph is a _complete_ idiot.

Too bad Toph's reputation as the _Blind _Bandit precedes her.

Too bad even the world's greatest Earthbender has her weaknesses.

Sokka leaps over the senseless form of the attacker whose head he just dented. He sends his boomerang up in a whistling _sssssh _toward the troublesome archer running around through the canopy above him. _Shttt-shtt, whnk_! He sidesteps and there's an arrow sprouting from the ground where his foot was only milliseconds before, fletching bristling a proud red. Two more shafts follow before the boomerang does its job and the archer produces a strangled _gack_. He falls earthward with a crash, moans—goes still.

These people—raiders, bandits, thieves, _whatever_; their categories all blur in his head—might be interested in taking down Toph and Sokka because they are two of Zuko's most valuable and powerful allies. Unhindered by the Earth Kingdom's military Bending bombshell and the Avatar's right-hand strategist, they could eventually stage a righteous takeover of the Fire Nation's new regime.

Sokka knows this.

These people might also be in it, though, simply because it drives them crazy to see two teenagers—one blind, one not even a Bender—lofted high as heroes by the world's masses. They might just want to try to hurt him. To hurt Toph.

Sokka _worries _about this.

The boomerang comes back to him. Seeing no more enemies, he catches it, thrusts it between his shoulders, and rushes from the scene of his battle to where Toph is fighting her own. It takes him a while to find her: the forest around him has fallen quiet.

He stumbles finally into a clearing speckled with small crimson footprints and hundreds upon hundreds of sharpened glass slivers. In the center of that clearing stands his best friend, her face bruised, her feet arched for the winking shards embedded in her toes, her heels, her soles. Her chest heaves; her hands open and close and the earth around her undulates, seething. An unconscious man sprawls opposite her with two black eyes and a yawning mouth in which Toph has left two fractured teeth to match them. Sokka doesn't stop to count specifically, but a roundabout glance tells him at least ten other teeth are scattered throughout the clearing, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight like little square pearls.

He starts for Toph, her name a coal lodged in his throat. Glass crunches under his boot and she whirls to face him, her mint-marble eyes wide and seeping tears, her mouth clenched in a soundless roar. There's blood on her teeth and her lip is split and she lunges at him, gargling out a furious primeval war cry because she can't _see _him—

"Toph!" he bellows. A sharp spike of solid rock nearly shaves off his privates. It _does _rip a hole in his breeches, breezing up along his thigh. "Toph"—his bellow wobbles to a yelp—"it's me!"

She shudders mid-leap and her fist opens, flaring harmlessly over his shoulder. Her knees crash into him; her feet hit the clearing's edge and she screams, just once, a faltering half-sobbed snarl. Were it not for the startled arms he pitches forth to catch her, she would fall.

"S-Snoozles," she bites out. Her fingers dig into his bicep, his chest and she's climbing him, trying to tear herself away from the ground that normally affords her such comfort. Under his chin her head swivels; her cheek touches his throat, leaving a hot, wet smear there. The puff of her breath against his flesh is rapid and strangled. "Sorry. Can't—_nngh_! C-can't _see_. My feet—"

She fastens one arm about his neck, hauls herself up a little more. To help her, Sokka presses a hand to her backside and, so no parts of her feet suffer friction, hefts her aloft in the loop of his arms. The rigid line of her spine tightens still more against his wrist and she breathes an unintelligible curse, tears coursing down her face in fresh thick rivulets. Rage radiates from her pores. It smells of ginseng tea.

Sokka opens his mouth to comfort Toph and suddenly the _rtta-rtta-tmp-rtta _of footsteps sounds in the distance. Voices stir. The fallen archer and his slingshot-wielding friend have been discovered by—judging by the slew of expletives erupting from that general direction—their fellow bandits.

"Toph." Sokka's words come out quiet, a hinge's low rasp. "Before this happened, how many of them could you feel?"

She shifts and her elbow grinds mercilessly into his kidney. "Eighteen," she replies without hesitation. "And an ostrich-horse."

Warmth on his boots. He looks down between them through the tangle of her twig-riddled hair: she's painting everything on him from the ankles down a bitter red. Her foot twitches; her heel taps his breeches and a smudged footprint like those patterned across the clearing lingers on the fabric.

Toph's reputation brought her fame she never requested. Now… now, oh spirits, her feet…

Sokka licks his lips. "Fifteen left," he husks. "Bet their damn ostrich-horse bites, too."

Toph laughs a dim ghost-laugh and agrees, "With our luck? Probably."

Grasping at each other there in the clearing, they weigh their odds. Two against fifteen would be a cakewalk if Sokka could attack without worrying about Toph, and if Toph could Bend without fear of blindly crushing Sokka between a rock and a tree (or something stupid like that). Because both of them are crippled, though, by either anxiety or injury, their chances at winning—hell, _surviving—_are plummeting faster than Sokka's appetite at a vegetarian restaurant.

The bandits' voices are louder now, a hoarse clamor. They want blood: more than Toph has spilled already.

"Have they seen you yet?"

Her question snaps Sokka from his stupor. Hitching her higher, he shakes his head and says, "I don't think so."

Toph's grubby fingers scrape his neck—his cheek. She cups the latter for a moment, listening to the underbrush crackle. Her head drops against his chest and he feels her smile into his collarbone. It's a shamed, wry kind of smile, one that mingles with her tears.

"Well then," she attempts, and chokes, and stops. Thumb tucked to the corner of his mouth, the greatest Earthbender in the world—the greatest _friend _in the world—asks Sokka to help her do something for which they will later be called cowards.

"Yip yip," she whispers, sounding the retreat. Her fingers flutter twice over his cheekbone and Sokka imagines he hears the snap of reins. "Get moving, Snoozles."

Clutching her close, Sokka turns.

He runs.


	6. Precious

**Commentary**: For Crossy. =) It's not near as good as what you deserve, but it's something and I hope you like it a little.

This is a continuation of _Preservation_.

**Words**: 1950

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**Word SIX: Precious**

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"Snoozles."

Sundown and his legs feel like they have a few of the Fire Lady's shuriken thrust in them. The back of his knee, a part of his body he never really paid attention to before, has become his world's whole focus. It throbs with every stretch, stumble, and scramble; it trembles and he imagines the skin there is a wet teabag, thready and pinched and only one special movement from shredding open.

Toph is heavy. She didn't start out that way, but minutes have crawled into hours into forever and each step Sokka takes finds the Earthbender sloping lower down his back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, the hard shelf of her chin a sharp point in his spine.

"Snoozles," she says again.

Lungs, ah—his lungs _burn_, air whistling from his nostrils in a hoarse gasping concerto. _Hff-hff_, _hff-hff_, _hff-hff _and his heart pounds its drums, the throb so loud in his ears, so consuming and he cannot stop, cannot stop, cannot st—

"_Sokka_," she hisses in his ear, and two breaths later she sinks her teeth into it too.

_Okay_, so maybe he can stop. Chest tight and heaving, he yelps out a startled, "_What_!" and skids to a halt, the Earthbender on his back still attached to his ear like some sort of weird demonic bitey-fish. "Leggo! Spirits! TOPH! What—"

His knees realize then that _heeeey_, he's not running anymore, and they do a quivery little seesaw-y sweep before they buckle. _Whump _and he's on the ground, Toph's thighs pressing hard to his hips before her teeth leave his flesh and she rolls away from him. Clutching at his injured lobe, Sokka stares at his friend and squawks, "You—you evil little _midget mole_! You _bit me_!"

Toph shoves herself up on an elbow and tosses a glare in his general direction. With her other hand she palms the earth, letting her breath out in a soft _saaaaa_. She says nothing for five seconds, ten. Finally: "They're far. And going the wrong way, now. We're okay."

"You _bit _me," Sokka repeats. There are teethmarks to support his claim: he brushes them with his thumb and shudders.

Worming onto her side, the Earthbender draws a knee up to her chest and carefully seizes one mangled foot. The sole looks like raw meat with little clear jagged bones sticking out of it—Sokka's stomach roils and Toph gasps, "Oh, poor little _baby _Sokka." She clenches her fingers. The shards of glass in her flesh tremble, shudder, and finally Bend free: she catches them in her spare palm, closes a fist around them. A fine film of harmless red sand trickles out along her lifeline.

"You can Bend glass?" wonders Sokka in an awed squeak.

"Not, _haa_"—Toph's working on her other foot now, eyes squeezed shut—"not _easily_. But glass, you know, it's mostly m-melted earth. F—!"

The few remaining shards come free in a spatter. Toph crushes them into a powder too and flops back in a sprawl on the ground, eyes wide and dribbling angry tears, lips parted. The beads of sweat on her brow glisten tangerine-orange in the sunset's stippled glow.

Leaning over her, Sokka demands, "If you could Bend them, why'd you wait until now to get them out? Do you _like _pain?"

"I like," Toph spits back, "not leaving a screaming bloody _trail_!"

Sokka looks down and notes that Toph's feet, which had scabbed over at some point during their escape, are weeping fresh crimson now across the floor of their thicket. He touches the lacerated toe of one and she snarls at him, wordless, jerking the appendage from his reach.

He tells her guiltily, "Well, they might not have your blood to follow far, but I'm pretty sure I left a path a mile wide all the way here." And then, "I'm sorry, Toph."

She flaps a hand at him. "Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it." As though he could do anything _but _worry about it. Struggling up on her elbows again, she insists, "_Distance_—we've got that on our side. And they don't seem very smart anyway." She hesitates. Admits, "Except for the glass. _That_ was pretty smart."

"And the arrows?" Sokka contributes.

Toph flexes her toes, wincing all the while. "Fine. And the arrows."

They lapse into quiet for a few moments, Sokka getting his breath back and Toph letting her feet bleed free in their agony. Birds mourn the day's end in the forest canopy above them; nearer by a badgerfrog starts the first notes of the nightly chorus. Sokka strains his ears and catches the feeble gurgle of a brook off to their right somewhere.

The heels of her hands digging into the ground, the Earthbender asks at last, "So. Mister Prepared. Got any bandages?"

"Well, not _exactly_," Sokka hedges, grateful to break the silence between them, "but I can whip something up…" _Ssssshk _and he's tearing fabric from the arms of his tunic, snapping it in a manner both authoritative and grim. "I look better sleeveless anyway," he mutters, partly to Toph and partly to himself. "Here. Gimme your foot."

"No." His friend's face stonewalls; her shoulders clench. "Give it, Meathead. I'll do it myself." She holds out an expectant hand between them, the fingers gritty and smeared, their nailbeds caked with dirt.

"You won't either," Sokka denies. "You can't see what you're doing, you _suck _at tying knots—hey. Don't give me that look." Toph's face is a volcano of protest inches from eruption. "You remember when you tried to braid your own hair? And how many _weeks _it took to get the tangles out?"

"Oh c'mon! _One _mistake and—"

"And nothing. These are your feet we're talking about here, not your hair. Ruin them and they won't grow back, Toph."

A twitch passes over Toph's face, a small convulsion of lips and eyelids and cheeks. Sokka recognizes it as fury; his neck produces an uncomfortable prickle. Years of traveling off and on with the blind prodigy have made him susceptible to predicting both her moods and the actions they include, and he is abruptly aware that he is two steps shy of an asskicking.

"Don't talk to me like you're my mother," Toph warns him. Her voice has a soft lilt to it that could be the melody of his death march; her eyes are flatter than usual, a gray reminiscent of fog and frail ice.

"Then don't act like a child," Sokka retorts, thinking that at least he'll die quick—Toph's not one for torture. Taking her anticipant hand, he folds it over his knee, scoots nearer, and closes his fingers finally over her foot. "Hold tight. Squeeze if you want. This is gonna hurt."

"Not as much as you will when I get through with you," growls the Earthbender—her nails dig furrows along the thicket's floor and in the seam of his breeches. Despite the threat, though, she doesn't hit him.

Yet.

And after a pause with her bleeding limb between his palms, neither does Sokka bandage her foot.

"Hello?" she prods him sooner than later. "Still leaking here, Snoozles. What's the problem?" He can feel her heartbeat through the thick wedge of her heel, pounding along fast and fervent. She doesn't like him touching her this way, and he gets the idea—if the clench of her brow is any indication—that it's not entirely because of her injuries.

"Can you feel water nearby? I hear it," Sokka responds.

"It's about sixty paces southeast. Why?"

The bandages he's made of his sleeves are thrust into his tunic; Sokka lifts Toph again next, bearing her bridal-style through the forest toward the sound of the brook. "Your feet need to be as clean as possible," he tells her. "Before I bandage them, I mean. Katara would probably say something about infection and festering and—"

"—I get it, I _get it_!"

"I just don't want them to rot off," he finishes cheerily. Lances of heat flare up his aching legs; Toph scrabbles at him for purchase. "Spirits"—he flinches—"could you not do that?"

"Do what?"

"_Claw _at me. I'm not going to drop you and—_ow_, come on! Your nails are _demonic_! What do you do, file them into talons?"

"I'm sorry," she mutters, and it might be his imagination, but it seems to Sokka that she's suddenly _trying _to find a tender spot to stab, "is this too _rough _for you?"

"You're a terrible patient."

"You're a terrible nurse."

"You smell bad."

"You have noodle arm—HEY! I do _not_! I smell like dirt!"

"I don't have noodle arms either," sniffs Sokka. He comes to the edge of the brook, a snake of water scarcely three feet wide, and kneels on its bank. Carefully he guides Toph's feet to the rippling surface—plunges them through it, watching as the soft current races away with runnels of her life's blood caught in its eddies. Toph hisses. She grasps both his bicep and the mossy bank.

"Hurts?" he asks.

"No, it's luscious," she snaps. "Of course it hurts!" But her voice lacks venom and she sinks into his side, slanting her eyes nearly shut. Holding up two fingers, she insists, "Glass-Bending practice."

Dragonflies buzz the brook's bank. One alights on Toph's knee and she jiggles it. When the insect doesn't move, she makes no effort to shoo it off again.

"Mm?" nudges Sokka.

"Glass-Bending practice," she repeats. "That's now on _my _agenda." Her eyes drift lazily high, low and he can tell she's trying not to think about the tug of the brook on her wounds; her hold on his arm lingers, insistent, white-knuckled. Cocking her head toward the drone of the dragonfly's wings, she mutters, "This water's really cold." And then, "Your arms aren't _that _noodle-y."

Sokka clutches at his chest. "Was… was that an apology, Toph?"

She rolls her sightless gaze skyward, sighs: her dark hair winks in the faltering light as her head falls sideways. The motion passes for a nod.

Sokka opines, "You're still a terrible patient." _Plip-plip-plip _as he lifts one of Toph's feet from the water and dries it on his breeches. She bristles against him and he finishes, smug, "But I lied. You don't smell bad."

Despite that this statement seems to placate Toph, she still punches him.

The day dies around them, taking with it the gravity of their situation, their anxiety, their fear—because they _were _afraid, just a little. Sokka bandages Toph's feet and carries her over the brook into the meadow beyond. They set up camp at its farthest border, their small fire hidden behind a jutting rock outcrop, their shoulders squared against the spring's questing wind. Occasionally Toph lowers a hand between them to search out foreign footsteps: but none come. They are alone here.

"Sokka," Toph says eventually, her face a pale citrus circle in the firelight.

He looks sidelong at her, surprised. She doesn't often address him without a nickname in tow. Because of this, he says nothing—but he does wait, his eyebrows high on his forehead, his mouth twisted into a stunned curl.

The flames crackle. In their lee Toph's shadow flickers, and she presses up on her sore heels and moves closer to him until her knee knocks his. Her hand finds his arm, patters down its length, stops on his wrist. She holds that between her thumb and forefinger as she might a special thing, a breakable thing. Her shoulders roll in a movement that's both shrug and shudder.

"Sokka," she says again.

Shaking free her tremulous grasp, he curls his arm around her.

This time she doesn't punch him.


	7. Therapy

**Commentary**: Happy early Valentine's Day! =)

Set post-series.

**Words**: 2,920

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**Word SEVEN: Therapy**

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Toph slaps Sokka's shoulder and sums up what she perceives as his problem and its solution in five words: "Suki's a bitch. Drink up."

She presses a cup—no, a _tankard _into his hand. The liquid in it sloshes out over his knuckles and he groans, miserable and appreciative at the same time. He brings it to his lips and swigs down one, two, three gulps, waiting for the familiar burn—

"It's TEA!" he gags, exhaling in a _hrrugh-hack! _of lemon-scented surprise. "I don't want _TEA_!"

The woman across from him leans against her counter and puts on a pouty face, clad in nothing but breast-wraps—donned at his expense—and a pair of light linen breeches. "Aw, I'm sorry," she coos. "I didn't want to be roused at three in the morning by a wailing idiot _either_, but apparently we don't often _get _what we want."

"I wasn't wailing!" Sokka defends. "I was just moaning loudly!"

Toph glares at him. Well, technically she glares at the space somewhere just to the left of his ear, but he gets the idea. Around her head her hair bristles in a boarcupine halo; her eyes glint in the room's shadows, mint and quicksilver slung together. There are no lamps here because she never needs them, but Yue gleams near full tonight in the window and sends her pale fingers hesitatingly over half of Toph's scowling face.

"How many times are you going to do this, Snoozles?" wonders Toph. She gestures emphatically between them. "Not that I don't _relish _the company, but this is—what? The seventh night this month you've wandered to my house at an otherworldly hour to mope?"

"Eighth," he corrects absently. His fingers worry around the lip of the mug she's given him. The tea inside it is cold, foul-tasting, metallic. It reflects Toph's current temper perfectly.

"Yeah, well—we're not even two weeks _into _the month. So. Concern. That's what this is." She stabs at herself with a rigid thumb. "Also: sleeplessness. You see this face? I hope you do because _I _don't, but even blind I know that I look like absolute _shit_, okay?"

Sokka gazes at his best friend, contributing no comment. There are shaded furrows under her eyes, a queer pinch to her mouth—tiny wiggly lines on her brow signify the start of wrinkles, his name written in every fledgling canyon. A candle of guilt flares in him. Heaving a sigh, he turns his gaze to his chilly tea, slurps at it, and slumps at Toph's table.

Quiet persists a moment, but then she forks out a sigh of her own, crosses the room, and takes a seat in the chair next to him. Her elbows come to rest on the table's surface. Along one of her wiry arms a new burn ripples in a weal toward her shoulder: evidence of an insurgent Firebender's lucky shot, no doubt. Prodding him beneath the table with her toes, she asks, "What do you want me to say?"

What _does _Sokka want her to say? He flicks a glance up at her again and is startled to find her eyes on him, focused in that peculiar pewter stare she's so good at conjuring. Clearing his throat, he finds himself offering, "Half a year."

"Ah-huh?" Up go her eyebrow and her palm, the latter to muffle a yawn.

"Half a year," he repeats. "Since Suki and I split."

"Hmph." She nods. Her lashes lower. "Yeah. I know. Half a year since you started showing up on my porch at two past midnight at the earliest—"

"Half a year since you let me in anyway," Sokka interrupts. "You've never left me out there."

Toph makes an odd sound in her throat, a little clinking noise. "At first it was fun," she mutters. "I can appreciate unannounced drinking parties as much as the next girl, after all. And you brought all that Kyoshi booze."

"Which you _still have_. Why didn't you serve me any of it tonight?" Sokka looks forlornly down into his tea again, barely able to suppress a sniffle. "Not like you to hold out on me, Toph."

"Hey. _Hey_. Don't talking to me about _holding_. You don't have any idea how terrible it is to _hold someone's head _while they barf out their guts _all over your couch_—"

"Blasphemy!" Sokka disagrees. "You threw up in my _lap _at your coming-of-age party! I held your head then! "

"That doesn't count," Toph says peaceably. "I was _supposed _to get shit-faced and throw up everywhere. It's your fault you were in the line of fire." Her toes brush his flesh again, little daggers of frigidity. She seems to delight in putting them there. "But you—you weren't supposed to get shit-faced. You were supposed to drink enough to forget about Suki for a while. Those are _not _the same thing and as much as it pains me to admit this, you're intelligent enough to know the difference."

"Well, uh"—and Sokka gropes for a comeback—"your couch was ugly anyway."

Toph's scowl intensifies, a thunderstorm rippling over the plains of her face. She can't deny his claim, though, because she never actually _saw _her couch (she threw it away the morning after Sokka christened it with his disgusting stomach juices). "Lame," she accuses him.

He sticks out his tongue at her. She can't see that either, and she runs the tips of her fingers together under her chin, a steeple dissolving and reforming over and over. Seconds pass—a minute. She is thinking about something. Sokka waits to find out what. He's got nothing better to do and more than a small part of him is curious, because Toph doesn't often go all introspective and broody on him.

"Booze hasn't ever helped you," Toph finally observes. "The parties were fun, sure, and yeah, they pissed off the neighbors, which is certainly a goal of mine whenever possible—I mean, their stupid _cats_. But… you still woke up miserable, didn't you? Afterward. Every time."

"Hmm," he wonders.

Six months since the first time he opened his eyes to the sun shining in through her window, his foot in a flowerpot and her hand—covered in mustard, the spicy kind from Gaoling—splayed over his chest. Miserable? Was he _miserable _then? And every time after?

Sokka considers.

He opens his mouth to give Toph his answer when she speaks again: "So I thought, hey, this time can be different. I'm your friend and I'm supposed to help you as much as get drunk with you, right?" She taps her fingers on the table near his elbow. "Therefore, tonight is the night for tea. Not booze. And _talking_."

Something about the way she says that last word makes Sokka's belly prickle. "Talking?" he hedges.

"Talking," she affirms, serious as the face of a mountain. Leveling her gaze at him—she's spot on, now—Toph insists, "You are going to tell me what happened. Between you and Suki. So I can try to fix it."

"Toph," Sokka reminds her, "the last time you tried to fix something, you killed a guy."

"He didn't _die_," she protests.

"Yes he did. He was dead for two minutes until Iroh gave him that nice round of shock therapy, and as much as _he_ deserved your, uh, _fixing_, I don't want Suki dead."

"Fair enough. I won't kill her. I'll just maim her a little." Toph cracks her knuckles. When other people do this, popping their digits one by one in a manner that's supposed to be threatening, Sokka doesn't worry. When _Toph _does it, his testicles crawl—because he knows she means it. "Come on. Start talking, Snoozles."

"No," he has the audacity to say.

She demands, "Yes." She rocks onto her knees in her chair, leaning over him. Tresses of her feral hair sweep his cheeks and she bares her teeth: they glitter in Yue's light, slick and white and deadly. "Now."

He lets out a breath he was unaware he was holding at all. "Let me get this straight, Toph. You want to know what happened between me. And Suki. You want me to—to divulge my man-pain. Talk it out. To get"—he arches his brows—"_squishy_."

"I think the word is _mushy_, and no—_Spirits_, I hoped the booze would work." Flopping back into her chair, Toph flings her hands high. "I _don't _want to hear about it. You never seemed to wanna get into the specifics even when you were standing up-falling down drunk, and I'm probably not the best person to tell those to anyway"—her eyes run away from him suddenly; he has to wonder why—"so I left it alone. _Six months_. Half a year. Had a good time. Loads of awesome parties.

"But let's face it, Meathead," she finishes, "I'm losing too much sleep. And what's been happening isn't doing good by you, if you keep coming back almost every night." Her jaw clenches. "I guess talking's what you need. So here I am." She squares her shoulders. "Let's do this."

_Reet-keet, reet-keet. _Outside, the crickets chirp as they do most nights. The sound swells now for the slip of spring into summer, and Sokka remembers the first time six months ago his feet carried him here, to his best friend's house in Ba Sing Se, when the ground was so cold it cracked under his boots and his breath fogged in the air before him. He remembers how he pounded on her door, not quite crying but almost: he remembers the press of the night around him and the feeling of being alone, _alone _for the first time in _years_, and what if she wasn't home, what would he do then_—_

And her door opened and the darkness of her house swallowed him, and he stumbled into her, and she socked him in the arm even though he was sniveling all over her, and—

"I left her," Sokka tells Toph plainly. "I left Suki."

_Reet-keet, reet-keet_.

Across from him, Toph blinks. Her mouth opens, works, closes again. "What?" she attempts.

"I—"

"No. Shut up." Toph slaps the tabletop. _Whk! _"You mean to tell me that you've been letting me tend your sorry sobby ass for _six months_ and—and YOU broke up with _HER_?"

"Well—"

"'I'm so _lonely_!'" Toph mimics, pitching her voice into a whine that sounds suspiciously, Sokka has to admit, like a certain Water Tribe peasant they both know and love. "'I don't know what to _do_. I'm _conflicted_.' You _ass_," she seethes, "_I liked that couch_."

"I liked Suki too," Sokka defends, and clarifies, "a _lot_, and I still do, but sometimes things we like just aren't the best for us! Spirits, sometimes we're not the best for those things either—"

"Sokka," Toph interjects for the second time. "You're comparing your girlfriend of—what? Four years? Maybe more? To a piece of _furniture_." She looks a mix of deeply amused and absolutely horrified. In her stalwart voice there is something rare, something that makes Sokka squirm. It's disappointment. "We're not talking about home decorating here—"

"I wasn't good enough, okay?" Sokka cuts in, unable to stand the idea that Toph thinks less of him for how he handled the heart of a Kyoshi Warrior half a year past. He starts to say something else—starts to layer his defense. But the words die before they reach his lips—and really, what else is there to offer but the truth, especially to his best friend? He mutters once more, softer now, "Just—not good enough."

Toph falls quiet, lips pursed. Were she not blind, the look she aims at him might be considered appraising, all lowered lids and tight scowl. But she can't see him: she can only listen. She does that—she _always _does that. One foot braced near his chair, her hand flared on the table between them, she feels out the sounds of his breathing, his heartbeat, his sincerity. It's not that she thinks he lies much, or that he would lie now, to her of all people. It's that habit has her check anyway.

At last: "What do you mean, you weren't good enough?"

Her voice shifts, just like that. Gone is the disappointment, in its place something else, something new. Sokka strains his ears. His aren't and never will be as good as Toph's, but he thinks—no. He's _certain _he hears _disbelief _under her words. It's not accusing. More importantly, it's not directed toward him at all. In her tone and on her face there is a question: _How could Suki think such a thing?_

"I mean—uh. I mean," Sokka tries. He flares his hands helplessly and shows them to Toph, who waits for something that means more to her that the rustle of fabric and the quickening rumble of his heart in the kitchen's quiet air. "It—we…"

He stops. He looks at Toph sitting across from him, waiting expectantly, her head cocked and her eyes narrowed. She breathes and he breathes and her breasts shift beneath her wraps, and he forces himself not to look at them, and outside the crickets have stopped their chirping.

"Suki's not a bitch," he says. Toph squints at him and he goes on, "We're still friends. We always _were _friends, and when we tried to be more than that, it wasn't—"

"If you're going to tell me about bad sex involving you and Suki," Toph intrudes, "let me know right now. I'll need to start looking for something sharp so I can stab it into my eye the _instant _you finish."

He huffs. "It _wasn't_," he continues, "good enough. It worked for a while and we were okay—sometimes we were even happy. But…"

His heart is beating faster now: Toph notices and blinks, leaning in a little, curiosity evident in the lines of her face.

"But when we were apart," he begins, "we didn't… _need _each other. Not that we didn't miss the company, but… we each came back to where the other was because we had to, you know? That's what was first. She had to keep training her warriors, didn't she? And I had to maintain the negotiations between the island and the rest of the world." He shrugs. "When she'd come home from her expeditions, it was like, 'Oh, there's Sokka! Good!' And it was the same. With me, I mean."

_Ta-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp-ta-tmp-ta-tmp-tmp_ and his pulse is a throb in his ears. A tiny frown has crawled onto Toph's mouth. It looks like a crack in a porcelain pot.

"That's not how it's supposed to be, Toph," Sokka tells the Earthbender earnestly. "You're not supposed to feel so… so _complacent _about reuniting with the person you love, even if you've only been away from each other a couple of hours. You're supposed to feel like—"

Like he felt when Toph's knuckles hit his shoulder in the dark six months ago. Like he felt every time he saw her before that: on a surprise ferry to Kyoshi Island, bundled in winter furs; in the Jasmine Dragon during the gang's thrice-yearly gathering; beneath the slopes of a mountain pass near Omashu, her saucer hat canted down over her useless eyes. Like he feels now, each night she opens the door to him—and every morning he wakes up to find her still with him, hauling out her desecrated couch for the garbage-pickers or vomiting into that special antique vase her mother sent her all the way from Makapu Village.

"Like," he whispers, and looks at her, and longs to reach for her and to tell her. He fails—at both things.

The crickets are still quiet.

"Oh," Toph says. Her frown deepens, cracks spreading, fissures erupting beneath her eyes and along her cheeks, shadows carved where not even Yue's light can touch them. And again, "Oh. Sokka. _Oh_. Geez."

"When the negotiations were over, I made plans to leave and she didn't try to stop me," he babbles suddenly. He feels like he has to finish it. She has to _know_. "Suki said goodbye. She told me to write. But there wasn't a kiss—not from her, not from me, and it was okay, it felt _fine that way_, and—"

Toph stands.

"That's enough." The words are rigid, brutal. Why not, coming from the world's greatest Earthbender? "Stop. I've heard as much as I need to hear."

She holds up a hand to cement the statement. Across her palm run continents of calluses; the arc of her arm bleeds silver under the window and the light it admits. She steps close to him. She plucks his cold tea away and throws it. It leaves a wet spatter on her wall; the cup soars through the window. He hears it shatter against the neighbors' fence.

"I can fix your problem," she insists. "You meat-guzzling _moron_. We should have talked about it sooner."

She ladles herself into his lap.

Sokka observes, "Uhm!"

Her arms snake around his neck.

"Er," he provides.

Her mouth finds his. She doesn't kiss him—she doesn't know how. So instead she bites him, branding him with her grin because she does know how to do _that_, and she growls into his startled, laughing yelp, "Like this, Sokka. Reuniting with the person you love—it's supposed to feel like _this_."

Later, when she finally allows him space for words, Sokka tells her that he agrees completely.


	8. Sick

**Commentary**: Here, have another! =) Again, happy early Valentine's Day!

**Words**: 3,500

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**Word EIGHT: Sick**

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It begins as an itch she can't scratch, deep in the seat of her ribs. She scrubs uncomfortably at her tunic a few times, takes a couple of deep breaths, and hocks a loogie out into the great yonder ("Agh!" cries Katara. "My hair!"). The wind whistles around her and Appa groans; his heartbeat under her thigh is the only solid thing in her perception. The itch calms. Toph forgets about it for a while.

It comes back after they've landed for the evening and set up camp. She leans over to collect a few dry twigs for the fire—they were poking her in the butt anyway—and jerks as feather-light prickles whisper beneath her flesh rather than atop it, a tickle entrenched somewhere in the caverns of her torso. Her chest clenches. She coughs: once. Spits. The prickling abates for the most part and Sokka calls, "Hey, awesome! Guys! Dinner's done!" Throughout their tiny faction wafts the beguiling fragrance of potatoes. Mesmerized by it, Toph grabs the twigs and hurries toward the fire, determined to get there before Twinkletoes. For such a skinny little snit, he sure can stuff his face.

Later that night she sits at Katara's feet and, in a rare moment of submission, allows the other girl to tend to her hair. "It was getting ferrrrr-_ocious_," Katara hisses in her ear. She makes a little growling noise and Toph giggles, unable to help it. Stunned silence falls across the campsite but for the crackle of flames and the small, girly sound made by the small, not-so-girly Earthbender. It dissolves into a yelp, however, when Katara's comb finds a tangle. The yelp morphs into a wet, strangled hack, hoarse and ugly and harsh. Mouth tight, brow synched, the Waterbender pauses.

But, "You made me choke on my own spit!" Toph snarls. "Not so hard, you jerk! That hurt!"

Rolling her eyes, Katara continues her ministrations. Sokka and Aang, who were staring at the Earthbender like she'd grown a second head, chalk Toph's giggle up to some weird cosmic hiccup ("That sort of stuff happens all the time," Aang wisely imparts to the Water Tribe youth). They recommence tossing nuts into the fire to watch them explode.

Night closes its cloak around them. Darkens. Deepens. Drifts past.

Toph crawls from her tent the following morning long after her friends have vacated their sleeping pallets. This behavior in itself is not unusual and they spare her little notice as she wobbles across the campsite to the forest's fringe, presumably to take care of her morning ablutions. Sokka notices her stumble out of the corner of his eye—by the time he's focused on her, though, Toph's back is a rumpled green square disappearing into the trees, slouched but certain.

When she returns for breakfast, he almost asks her if she's all right: her cheeks are red, her movements ginger. She thieves away his jerky, however, and the morning devolves into a howling match that ends with him encapsulated in rock up to his nipples and Toph laughing so hard she must wheeze for breath between great whooping cackles. The sun shines. The birds sing. Aang and Katara shake their heads. Everything is normal.

They climb onto Appa and proceed skyward. For eight hours they fly into the horizon, each of them lost in thought. Occasionally they strike up small conversations or play games—Aang points out landmarks, Katara makes a grocery list, and Sokka polishes Boomerang. Toph is quiet, her hands hooked in the tribesman's elbow, her face turned into the wind. Her eyes water. She feels too hot inside her clothes, inside her own skin—her mouth is dry, her head full of heavy, buzzing fog. She aches all over, everywhere.

"Your cooking's poisoned me, Meathead," she mutters to Sokka. "You'd better conduct a fine funeral. I want the works: wailing dedications, statues. _Cannonfire_. The world needs to know—"

"WHAT?" Sokka asks, squinting down at her. "'JOO SAY SOMETHING, TOPH?"

She shrugs and determines to suffer in silence—to die with dignity if it comes to that. The breeze numbs her. Slumped against Sokka's shoulder, she drowses.

_Whump! _She wakes when her pillow leaves in an abrupt jerk: she sprawls across the saddle of the weary sky bison and is dimly aware of Sokka dancing around her and shouting, "Look at all those fish jumping! Dinner's gonna be _cake_! Gotta find my pole—hey! Toph! Come on! You've gotta see this!"

A hand finds her shoulder: fingers fist in her tunic. She is hauled upright, spun around. "Uh," she provides. Her head feels so heavy that she lets it sink against her collar. Fire spurts up her legs, down her arms—the itch roars back to life in her chest, scraping mercilessly her vital areas. She gasps and the press of air in her throat is like lightning.

"Oh," Sokka says, mistaking that gasp for scorn, "right, _see_. Sorry. Here. Lemme get you down."

His hands slide under her arms. He lifts her—dangles her over the edge of the saddle. Countless times he has done this and now is just once more, and he drops Toph against Appa's flank and watches her slide earthward. He realizes not a second after she's left his grip that his palms are still hot from touching her.

Toph hits the ground on one foot and the layout of their new campsite pulses through her awareness in a colossal wave: there's a body of water nearby, _spk-spk_ing as fish leap across its surface after insects. Boulders to the lee of that water, stacked five wide and three tall—Katara's making a fire at the base of them already. In the reedy shallows Aang splashes after the fish, his laugh bubbling and bright, and—

Toph brings down her other foot. Her world screams into terrible focus; her head fills to bursting, each sound like a needle plunged deep. An itch: an itch throughout, searing, tearing. "Kuh," she husks, "_Katara_—"

Katara lifts her head. Aang turns. Sokka leaps.

Toph falls.

She hits the ground broadside and, for the first time in her memory, it hurts.

She feels Sokka's hand on her head, her face, her side, turning her over. She blinks. From down a long tunnel his voice runs to her, behind it the whip of Aang's cry and Katara's shriek of surprise. "Toph!" they all call together. "Toph! Toph!"

She closes her eyes, not that it matters, and drifts into nothing.

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"An infection," Katara says half an hour later, emerging from the tent wherein the group's smallest member has been stripped almost naked and swathed in blankets. Tapping two fingers between her breasts, the Waterbender insists, "Here. Deep in the lungs."

"Could you help her?" This from Aang. He clutches his staff tight in his fingers, his young face a shameless eruption of worry. "Is she going to be okay?" He cranes his neck to look over Katara's shoulder. He catches a glimpse of a round face in a sea of furs, features flushed and lax, before the tent flap swings shut. Sokka sees it too. He makes a small moaning noise.

"I did what I could," Katara agrees. "I'll try again later. But you know Toph"—and the older girl's mouth crooks wryly—"she's stubborn. Earth only gives way to water after pressure, time… patience."

Aang's face falls. He rocks to and fro on his little lithe feet. "But—"

"Toph's tough," Katara soothes him. "She'll be fine."

Toph doesn't have to be conscious to tell them Katara is a terrible liar. They can see the untruth on her face as easily as a shadow.

A day passes.

"Sokka." Katara's voice cuts across the campsite, a whisper. She's leaning from the tent. "_Sokka_," she calls again, and her target scrambles over on his hands and knees, leaving Aang and the fire behind. The evening sky above them all burns toffee-orange.

"What?" Sokka demands. "What is it? Is she awake?"

A choking sound emerges from the tent behind Katara, who winces. In her hands she twists a cloth anxiously—specked with red, Sokka notes. His wolf-tail prickles.

"Katara?" he wonders.

"The nearest town," his sister instructs him softly. "Find it on one of your maps, Sokka—I know you have plenty. _Please_. Show Aang how to get there. I'll pack up Appa."

"We're leaving? It's late, Katara—"

"Aang and I are leaving," Katara corrects him.

_Wtta-wtta-wtta-sppt_, the reeds chortle. Sokka stares at his sibling and cries, "_What_? Why—whu—_just _you and Aang?"

Katara slips the rest of the way from the tent and closes her hand on his arm. Hot, strong: her grip is an iron band and it tightens enough that his elbow creaks. "_Yes_. Keep your voice down," she hisses. "She just got back to sleep! You'll upset her—"

"You're upsetting _me_! Don't I get a say here?" Pinwheeling his arms, the tribesman nevertheless lowers his voice to a furious murmur. "I can't watch Toph—I mean, you're the healer here, not me. I couldn't even take care of a lemming-rat, remember? I forgot to put the hot-rocks around his cage and he turned into a little rodent _popsicle_—"

"Toph is not a lemming-rat. She's your friend," Katara interrupts. "And you're not seven years old anymore, Sokka, as much as you're acting like it right now." Leveling her cool gaze at him, the Waterbender draws him away from the tent. Ten paces hence and just beyond the circle of firelight, she kneels with him at their sleeping pallets and demands softly, "Listen. My healing's not working, Aang's frozen frogs met terrible and completely ineffectual deaths, and we're out of cough medicine." She holds up the blood-flecked cloth; Sokka shies from it. "Her throat's torn to pieces. We need something stronger."

"So write down her symptoms and send _Aang_!" protests the youth.

"Suppose they try to cheat him? Suppose he wastes a trip there and back for the wrong medicine and Toph only gets sicker?" Katara challenges. "I'm no herbalist, but I know more than Aang does and I'm a better bargainer too. I need to be there with him."

"Why not take her with you? Better yet, why don't we all go?" Sokka presses. "Field trip! Everyone loves field trips!"

Her sister hesitates. Closes her eyes. Responds, "I don't think exposing Toph to the chill in the air is a good idea right now."

A badgerfrog croaks. A stick in the fire splits, cracks. Gaze hedging back to the tent, Sokka finally asks, "How sick is she, Katara?"

"We need to leave now," Katara answers quietly, and Sokka voices no more objections.

* * *

His sister and his friend soar into the night, higher and higher until Appa's bulk melds with the ink of the sky. Sokka waves the whole time. When they are gone—well and truly gone—he puts out the fire, pulls free his wolf-tail's tie, and crawls into the tent at the edge of the campsite. Overhead, the white pricks of the stars are like eyes watching him.

He takes a seat next to Toph's bedroll. She's always been tiny, but she looks downright dwarfish now in the sea of furs, the muscles and lines that usually make up for her small stature hidden by heaping coverlets. Anxious, Sokka rests his thumb against her pale brow. The flesh there is dry, soft, scalding. Her eyelids flutter and he jerks his touch away again.

"Are they gone?" The words come out raspy. Lumps shifting beneath the blankets signify her hands, her feet; an elbow chuffs along Sokka's knee and, grunting, its owner worms closer to him.

"Gone," he echoes. Licking his lips, he affirms, "Yeah, they are. Left just a minute ago. Aang said he thought they'd be back by sunrise."

Sick as she is, Toph still manages to crook an eyebrow. She smirks at him. The corners of her mouth are sunken, the dimples there too solemn for even sharp-edged sweetness. "And what time's it now, Snoozles?"

"Almost moonrise." Her hand finds the same knee her elbow did before. She clutches at it, nails scratching against the fabric of his breeches. On her face there is an odd expression: frustration and gladness mixed, a war over her pale lips and flushed cheeks. "Toph?" he asks. A notion to take her questing hand swells in him. "You okay?"

"All this stupid fluffy shit," she grumbles. She rolls in the furs, huffing, to indicate what she means. Sokka can feel her trembling. "Can't see much. Can't—well. Can't really see anything, actually."

She edges still closer. Sokka drops his hand over his knee—Toph brushes it. She stiffens a bit and he holds his breath, but in the next instant her small grubby palm is flush with his and her knuckles, like knots on a limb, struggle up under his fingers.

"There," Sokka says. He squeezes her hard little claw of a hand. "Now you've got me."

She grins. It makes her the real Toph for a few scattered seconds, the one who's never sick, never small, never soft. "You mean you've got me," she revises. She jiggles her hand in his—or his hand in hers, whichever. She draws in a breath to say something else—something smart-assed, by her face—and chokes on the attempt. Her body jackknifes. She coughs.

Only it isn't _just_ a cough. It's deeper, crueler, darker: Sokka is not a Waterbender like his sister, no, but he knows well the sounds of currents and the one in Toph's lungs is the creeping, stealing sort. It surges again and again until the blind girl rests panting and dazed on her pallet, thin chest hitching, hand limp under Sokka's uneasy fingers.

"Wow," she says when she manages to get her wind back. Her head rolls toward him, its brow glistening. She licks red flecks from her lips with a weak grin and imparts, "I feel like complete crap, Sokka."

"It'll be better soon," he assures her instantly. "I mean, come on. You're Toph. You eat mountains for breakfast, right?"

She holds up a stern finger, wiggles it. "I _move _mountains. _Before _breakfast. Eating them would be impolite."

"You're pretty much always impolite, Toph."

"Hey, not to mountains. Mountains are cool." And then, "Your heart's running along pretty fast in your fingers here, you know. Scared, Snoozles?"

"No," Sokka lies.

Toph smiles.

* * *

She sleeps and she doesn't, shifting restlessly under the furs, her breathing a crackling kind of wheeze at best and a thready, feeble hiss other times. The tent smells of soft, dry earth: a desert. A desert inside Toph. She's drying up and it terrifies Sokka.

A deafening chorus of badgerfrogs flank midnight's arrival. By two past that hour, Toph is shivering so badly that her teeth chatter, _chk-a-chk-a-kk_, and Sokka must use all his strength to keep her from crawling from the tent to the embers of the campfire outside.

"Come _on_," she grunts, thrusting her head into his ribcage. Her hair scratches at his chin; her spine rolls under his palm like a metal band. "I'm f-freezing, you _idiot_. The fire—I need it, let _go_—"

Clamping his arms around the squirming Earthbender, who is actually near the temperature of molten lava, Sokka shoves her back into the bed-furs and denies, "No!" He doesn't have time to get in another word edgewise because Toph punches him: hard, her little fist like a rockhammer pounding straight into his jaw. Stars explode across his vision; he bites his tongue without meaning to, cries out.

He's angry suddenly, mostly because he's scared too, and before he can even think about what he's doing he pins Toph beneath him, all the weight of his scrawny body parked on the furs just to the left of her hip. Sausaged, she grunts, snarls, wiggles, writhes, caught in the cage of the blankets and his elbows. She tries to bite him. She misses—tries again. Same result.

She struggles forever, it seems, and when she finally falls still, shoulder to shoulder with him, Sokka's jaw provides him a dull, continuous throb and he's pretty sure his tongue is bleeding too. He watches her through the scatter of his loose hair. Her face is tight, her lips taut and trembling and fixed in a grimace, her eyes screwed up at the corners.

"Hey," Sokka starts, and stops again. He stares.

Toph is crying.

He lurches upright and leans over her, swabbing at the trickles on her cheeks. "Toph?" he worries. "Toph, hey, don't—it's okay, no—"

"What do you _want_?" she grates, jerking from his hovering fingertips. The question is almost a sob. "What? Huh? What is it? Is this fun for you? Do you _like _torturing me?"

He blanches. "_Torturing _you? I'm trying to keep you from _hurting _yourself—"

"I'm _cold_," snarls Toph, tears thick on her face, voice clogged and furious and miserable. "And I already _hurt_. A little more doesn't matter, don't you get it? I just d-… d-don't want to be cold. So just—just _stop _it, if you're my friend. Just let me go."

The world's greatest Earthbender drops her head back against her pillow, closes her eyes, and seethes. The tears stop—the coughing lingers, an ugly rasp on the back of every breath. Against Sokka's knee, she quivers.

"Don't wanna be cold, huh?" he queries.

"Spirits," sniffs Toph. "I thought I was supposed to be the impaired one here. Are you deaf, S-Snoozles?"

A moment later, Sokka lifts the furs.

"What are you _doing_?" Toph demands, grasping at them. "Give them back!"

"Sure," agrees the tribesman peaceably. Sliding under the coverlets, he folds them back into place, prods Toph in the side, and reasons, "Scoot over. You're hogging them all."

"Whoa. Hold it." The Earthbender's pale face goes an awesome shade of fuchsia. Sokka only wishes she had both a mirror and the capability to see it. "Why—what—"

"I'm keeping you warm," Sokka argues. He loops an arm around his sudden bedmate and drags her close. She's wearing one of his sister's old nightshirts, the stupid frilly blue kind. The sleeves swing on her arms like snakes. She seems smaller than Katara ever was, swallowed by the garment, and that observation only makes Sokka tighten his grip.

"No," Toph denies despite that she's already inching closer. Her breath is hot and fast on his collar, _haa-aahn, haa-aahn_. "You're—"

"A renowned furnace," Sokka supplies. "Gran Gran used to love putting her feet on me." Rolling onto his side, he wraps Toph in his arms and draws her into him. She gasps, sunfishes: but only because what he says is true. He _is _warm. Spirits, he's better than the _sun_.

Too bad he's not invulnerable to pain like said heavenly body. "Ow!" he yips as her nails sink into his flesh. "Geez! Toph! That—yikes, that's my _spleen_!"

She doesn't listen. She claws at him until he's curved around her, over her: until her entire world smells like Sokka, feels like Sokka, and is especially _heated _by Sokka. She thrusts her face into the center of him. _Brmm-brrm, brrm-brrrm_: his heartbeat is muffled but certain through the cushion of the furs they share.

His hand furls over the nape of her neck. His fingertips feel like the stars must look, Toph thinks.

She sleeps.

* * *

Katara peels back one tent flap and looks anxiously into the frail darkness beyond. Aang hovers just a pace back, biting his lip.

Midmorning paints the clearing around them golden. The fish are jumping again, their breakfast insects a droning lull near the reeds. Appa too has already found a patch of dewy grass to munch, his saddle draped haphazardly on a boulder nearby the dead fire.

Idyllic setting or not, they are still later than promised. The Avatar and his friend have to wonder: _too _late?

The campsite is quiet, the tent tomblike.

Katara deals with the second flap. It falls aside in a scutter of fabric. A square of sunlight seeps into the canvas shelter next, plunging over Katara's shoulder onto the disheveled bedroll and the two forms therein. Sprawled on his back with his arms still hooked about his charge, the first of those two appears to be sleeping.

Katara sucks in a sharp breath. Noting the sound, her brother lifts his head, scratches his temple. He blinks owlishly at her. Toph stirs too, a wraith of red cheeks and mussed hair. Under the furs her feet flex, contract, still again. She sighs—grumbles faintly and roots at her pillow, cheek propped on Sokka's collar. The circle of her arms around the drowsy youth can only be termed a cling.

"_Sokka_," whispers the Waterbender. She holds up a medicine pouch and makes to crawl into the tent. A movement from her vision's periphery, though, halts her progress.

Katara looks up.

Her brother grins, winks, and holds a finger to his lips.

Against him, Toph begins to snore.


	9. Morning

**Commentary: **Sorry, been in the hospital for the past week! Back now. Expect more of these, of course. =) This one's really quick. Set post-series. …a lot.

**Words: **500

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**Word NINE: Morning**

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"Gerroffme, mmph. Geez."

"Nngh?"

"Ge… get _off_. Damnit!" Squirming, wriggling: a small knee jerks perilously close to a vulnerable crotch. The owner of that crotch, one very hungover tribesman called Sokka, is too numb to recognize the danger and blinks bleary eyes open at the cantankerous she-beast stirring beneath him.

"What is wrong with you?" he manages. The words taste terrible in his mouth: like bisonshit, actually. He maneuvers his tongue around, smacking his lips, clicking his teeth. It doesn't help. "Ugh," he changes the subject, "something died in my mouth."

"Crushing me. You're _crushing me_," groans Toph. She rejoins, "And your breath, Spirits—_"_

"Something _died _in my _mouth_," Sokka insists. Talking is painful: his words are like hammers smashing into his skull's secret sanctum and his voice, his magnificent manly voice is so _loud_—

Abrupt searing fiery pain! Her toenails! His shin! Agh!

"Your toenails!" he barks. "My shin!" It's his turn to squirm and he does, rolling sideways, elbows tucked, chin down. Natural, instinctive: stupid, because his grouchy mattress has a hard head and he slams his face right into the crown of it. Two seconds finds him on hard stone floor clutching at his bruised brow, his buttocks angled in a salute to the morning, his knees aquiver. He's pretty sure there's a mile-wide gash in his leg too.

"_Thank _you," exhales Toph, still ensconced in the lovely warm cushion-y furs. "Your head weighs a ton." Through watering eyes Sokka watches the imperious creature throw her limbs akimbo. She stretches, pale-cream arms pinwheeling over the sea-ink kelp of her snarled hair—she yawns. He bets her breath is just as bad as his.

"Does not," he counters, and informs her, "I think I broke it on yours." He adds a whimper to the end of this observation. Just in case, you know. She feels like doling out some sympathy.

As if. "Baby," she snorts. She runs a hand down her sleep-smeared face, sniffs her fingertips, winces.

Sokka puts in peevishly, "You need to trim your toenails. You've _wounded _me here—"

"_Big _baby," she amends. The furs rustle as she sits up. Her shoulders roll—her joints pop like pistons, _krakow_. In the square of sunlight that falls through the window and down over her, he can see the lingering red imprint of his temple on her jutting collar.

Righting himself—it takes a great effort and a few well-placed moans of misery—Sokka cradles his aching head in his palms and watches Toph watch nothing. The lumps of her knees bobble under the blanket. Her mouth twitches.

Finally she turns her head in his direction, her eyes winking with all the brightness of stolen coins. "Feels like a badgermole's excavating in my head," she says admiringly. She pauses. Praises: "That was good wine you found." The words pulse golden and Sokka basks in them, temporarily forgetting physical grievances and the flavor of morgue in his throat.

"Well," he sighs, "you know. Happy anniversary. And stuff."


	10. Seven

**Commentary**: Not able to write much yet, but here's something. These aren't in chronological order; these aren't all fluffy. Still, I hope you enjoy them.

**Words**: 700 (100 apiece)

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**Word TEN: Plot**

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Splaying her toes over the earth, Toph pushed. Waited. Listened. Summer insects whined. Nearby her ear an ambitious one buzzed lustily.

Fifteen yards hence her target stumbled. She crept closer, sending ripples through the ground toward said target. It tottered, lurched. Grinning, she stepped onto the path. Opened her arms.

Sokka fell into them. His warm heaviness smelled of jerky. He groaned, "Camp—which, uh. Toph?" A pause—he squinted at her. "Yeah. Hey. Which way's camp?" And then, "Carry me there? Please? Maybe?"

Toph sneered, "Lightweight," and synched eager hands at his hip. She spirited him into the night.

* * *

**Word ELEVEN: Official**

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His fingers in the dust, twiddling. Toph watches—sort of. Little loops and boxes and swirls under his hand, a map of strange lines: they appear slowly, methodically. When he is finished, he gives a grunt of satisfaction. No explanation. Nothing.

Predictably, Toph will have to fish.

"Hey," she ventures.

A pot over the fire rattles. "Hey," he replies, a smile in the word.

"What did you do? Just now?" Toph waves a hand toward the scrawls in the dirt.

"Wrote our names," he returns, his mouth already full of stew. "Iff'i'okay?"

Heat crawls up Toph's face, but sure. It's okay.

* * *

**Word TWELVE: Addition**

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They crouch together, the percussion of their hearts high and heady, their twined breathing a soft backbeat. His beard and the pebbles he's tied in it tickle her ear. She winces, leaning away a little: his hand flexes at her hip, though, and she stays with it. With him. As usual.

Moron.

"I don't understand why you won't go straight into them," he grouches, voice scarcely a whisper. "They'd never know what hit them—"

"Your job this time, Snoozles," she insists. She moves. His hand falls over the hard swell of her belly.

"Oh," he realizes. "That. Right."

* * *

**Word THIRTEEN: Comfort**

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At the wedding, she says, "Congratulations, Meathead," and she means it. She slaps his shoulder, leaves a star-shaped bruise there. To Suki she gives a gentle squeeze of fingers and the instructions to, "Take care of his sorry ass. Both cheeks."

Years, oh years: they bleed as a wound bleeds and she wanders the four nations until, one day, Aang catches her to whisper, "He needs you."

She finds him with his daughter on his hip on a hillside. "TOPHIE!" shrieks the baby, oblivious, reaching for her.

Toph opens her arms and Sokka, his face wet, steps into them instead.

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**Word FOURTEEN: Skinny-dipping **

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"Can I just state," she groans, "that you are the biggest idiot _ever_?" And then, "Oh, my head."

"You drank it—no, _guzzled _it," he defends. "I didn't make you! I even tried to _warn _you—"

"I'll tell _Katara_," she seethes, exulting at his pulse's catapult. "I'll tell her you took advantage of me with your terrible _cactus juice_—"

"Took _advantage _of you? Don't make it sound like we did anything! We just—"

"Got _naked_," Toph reminds him. Loudly. "And wet. _So _wet."

Katara shrieks, "_WHAT?_" from the adjoining room and Toph, hangover forgotten, nearly dies laughing.

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**Word FIFTEEN: Proposal**

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He ladles it into her hands, the chip of stone all covered in grooves. "What do you think?" he asks.

What is she supposed to think? Primarily silica, the thing in her palms is fragile, thin. She rubs it, _ssshk_.

She provides, "It's a rock."

"Definitely a rock," Sokka agrees. "A _special _rock."

Special? Toph frowns. "Feels pretty normal to me."

"Well, anyway"—his heart shivers, throbs—"I was wondering if you'd hold it a while. For me."

"…_suuuuure_," she concedes dubiously, but damn if she doesn't almost drop it when he whoops and drags her close to kiss her.

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**Word SIXTEEN: Epitaph**

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Her breathing ebbs. Crimson bubbles erupt from her nostrils and he shakes her—Sokka _shakes her _because this can't be happening, no, not to Toph, please Spirits not to _Toph_—

"Stuh," she chokes. She glares up at him. She does a pretty good job of it. "Stuh-_stop_ that. Just." Her tongue darts out, pink in the red gash of her mouth. "Just stop. Is… issok."

Dropping his face close to hers, he begs her, "I _can't_, I—what'll I tell them? What—"

Her hand on his face, hard, grubby, slick. "Tell 'em I died under you," she sighs. "_Idiot_."


	11. Patience

**Commentary**: This is so much fun! Maybe I'll write a few more snippets before I close out this fic. What do you think?

**Words**: 3,868

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**Word SEVENTEEN: Patience**

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Morning. Golden, the world: next to their campsite, sparks of the sunrise ripple across the surface of a swoop-shaped lake. Through that surface's warm glitterscape a fish jumps. _Wikka-wikka-weet _reckons a single bird from the canopy of the overhanging trees, and dew clings to the grass still as the day stretches tenuous fingers farther up the sky's diminishing velvet. The cattails rustle together, their hazy rub indicative of an easterly breeze.

Absorbing all this, Sokka scratches resolutely at his left buttcheek and scowls. "Where," he says to nothing in particular. The bird ceases its chirping. Heartened by this clear display of attention, the tribesman continues, "Where the heck is Toph?"

One potential answer to that question: not here. Sokka's scowl deepens as he turns, rolling his shoulder against the dawn. He surveys the campsite. Bedroll, check. Boomerang Jr., check. Belt, pants, loincloth—wearing them. _Awesome_. Checkity-checkity _check_. Grouchy, blind, usually-snoring, nose-picking, shoulder-punching travel buddy?

Absent!

And he was so, so close.

"Uuugh," he groans. Leaving off his itchy buttock, he scrubs his fingers down his face instead and drowsily collects his weapons. He slides his feet into his moccasins, flexes his toes, drags his hair into its haphazard wolf-tail. His gaze flicks a final time to the lake. "Tranquil," he laments. "Serene. _Quiet_. Perfect place to sleep away a summer morning. But _noooooo_…"

He hitches his belt tight over his narrow hips, breath huffing out in a suffering sigh. Sleep? Today? _Never_. A lesser man might be able to simply ignore his companion's nonattendance—would probably chalk it up to the possibility that oh, yeah, Toph left the campsite to go use the bathroom. Find breakfast. Take a walk. Why not? Girls always need to pee—Sokka has a sister and knows well this tendency. Toph is almost always hungry too. It makes sense that she might try to locate some berries or something with which to stuff her ravenous face. And finally, well, the morning is _glorious_, the ground cool, the breeze friendly and fair. Later it'll be too hot to do anything but sweat. Taking a leisurely stroll through the forest while the weather still permits it isn't exactly a farfetched notion.

The trouble is, though, Sokka isn't a lesser man, and he can't handle a _probably _or a _maybe_—not when it comes to Toph. He doesn't _know _she's off using the bathroom or cramming food into her mouth or having a hike, and because he doesn't know, he's got to find out. It's not because he has make sure she's okay, or even because he's worried about her—neither of those things would be sensible. As the world's greatest Earthbender, the world's only Metalbender, the Earth Kingdom's most formidable military force, and an all-around general badass, Toph can take care of herself. Usually. On the rare occasions she _can't _take care of herself, hey, Sokka has to be realistic: it's not very likely a scrawny, meat-munching Water Tribe dude is going to be the difference between her life and death.

His leg gives a low, pulsing twinge and his palm creases with the flesh-memory of stone-hard fingers clenched in his. _Although there was that one time…_

No, seriously. Sokka's not worried about Toph. Knowing where she is, though… that's just, eh, a kind of _need_, a compulsion, a niggling little necessity, and it's been there ever since she joined the group all those years ago. He got used to it then, see: the nub of her elbow in his side as they flew over the world on Appa. The sound of her snorting laugh as she tortured Aang, throwing those boulders at his shiny bald head. During that almost-year they spent together with the Avatar, Sokka always had an idea of where Toph was and what she was doing. She was a kid—a crazy-powerful Earthbending prodigy, sure, but still a kid. Just like Aang. Kids needed—need—supervision, and Sokka? Sokka fell into supervising them. As the oldest of the group, it was only natural he took on the job.

Waking up now to find that crazy-powerful Earthbending prodigy gone, even though she's not a kid anymore, even though she doesn't _need _his supervision… yeah. Sokka winces, rubbing away the slow knot of tension in his leg. It's an uncomfortable feeling, Toph's absence.

The leg pain sucks too.

He notes a series of small dimples in the grass, faint cups where the dew shines silver. Footprints—heh, Tophprints. With a grunt he straightens and sets off trailing them, letting his arms swing slowly to and fro at his sides. He jabs them out occasionally, thrusting with his elbows. His blood starts to sing in his temples and his heart jockeys along in time to that melody, low and stringent: _find Toph, find Toph, find Toph_…

She doesn't need him anymore—to watch her back, to act as an authority figure. To _supervise._ Sokka does it anyway, though, because old habits die hard. She's become his ritual—and his right hand, sorta. He's off his game when she's gone. It's been proven by his terrible jokes, his drunken shenanigans that are neither very drunken nor extraordinarily shenanigan-y without the legendary foul-mouthed Bei Fong in tow. Constantly he looks for a green-gray flash that isn't there, or stretches his hand out for the rasp of filthy fingernails so much smaller than his own. An empty space opens in him on nights when he must walk home from the tavern alone, or on days when he gazes out at the tundra of his homeland, continents between himself and his best friend, his thoughts and his steaming breath in the air his only company. He's caught himself talking to her on those chill mornings, starting a conversation with that easy, "Hey Toph—" only to find the words cut off, stoppered up behind a cork in a bottle, when he runs into the realization that she's not there to listen to them.

Not to mention that, as is evidenced by his current meander around the lake's edge, he can't sleep when she's not around.

Bizarre as it is relying on the little blind woman he's hung around with since she was a little blind girl, Sokka is the one who almost needs Toph now. Not in the same way he needs air, or food—but still. She's pretty important. Being the person he likes to see in the reflection of his shaving knife every morning is next to impossible without her nearby.

Sokka shuffles sleepily on. _Find Toph, find Toph, find Toph…_

Around him the forest is waking up. Morning insects, anticipating the heat of the day, send their whining chorus high in earnest, and across the lake more fish are jumping. The cacophony of birdsong overhead is resplendent in its variety, and Sokka muses that even if he does find Toph soon, he'll never be able to get back to sleep for all the noise.

Her trail leads through the fine grass at the lake's edge and up into the higher brush of the meadow beyond, a pale winding dent in the sea of dew-heavy blades. He steps over the crest of that meadow and looks up to find Toph standing in the middle of its slope, her curled fists tucked on her hips, her legs braced in that familiar come-and-get-it stance. She's wearing nothing but a linen shirt and a loincloth, and the sleeves of the former puff and prickle in the breeze. Were her eyes the sort that could see, she might be looking out over the lake and the beautiful sunrise spilling its paint across the water. Because her eyes aren't that sort, though, Sokka has no idea what she's doing.

He aims to find out. Lifting his hand in an instinctive wave, he stops at the base of the meadow's soft slope and calls up to her, "Hey!"

The sound echoes. Bird chatter tapers; the drone of the insects lulls a little, and Toph turns her face in his direction. At his current distance he can't tell her expression, so he maneuvers his way up toward her until her features come into focus: slanted eyes, drooping jaw, pursed lips. Leaning into the breeze, she grunts her welcome and unclenches a fist to twiddle its fingers at him. She looks almost as sleepy as he feels, and he settles at her feet in the long grass. He tickles the top of one of those feet first with a blade he plucks from the surrounding thousands—the toes twitch irritably. Next he puts the root end of the green instrument into his mouth and chews it, contemplative, quiet.

Two minutes pass.

"Sleep well?" he ventures finally.

She grunts again, her chin sunken low over her chest. Her eyelashes flutter.

"Fantastic!" Sokka enthuses. "Because I woke up and, you know, you were _gone_, didn't bother to even leave a note"—haha, excellent; she's blind, how could she leave a note? Genius, Sokka, _genius_—"and so I felt like I had to come find you in case you were, I dunno, getting chased by a moose-lion or something—"

Movement. Her hand: it comes to settle in a light press over the curve of his skull, the fingertips resting gently just under the puff of his wolf-tail. Her palm touches his temple, pushes it, and his body cants sideways and his cheek is suddenly resting against her thigh.

Her very bare, somewhat creepily muscled and yet extremely soft thigh.

Wow.

Sokka's mouth dries up. The blade of grass falls from it. Words, normally so easy for him—Toph once accused him of being a Blabberbender—desert him instantly. The wind sighs across the meadow, chilling the startled sweat on his brow into a brisk band.

"Uh," he manages. He swallows. His own spit lodges unhelpfully in his throat and he's about to choke on it, really, and then her fingers shift a little, the nails scratching against the grain of his hair. That motion sends a rill of heat down his spine and he shudders, some parts of him relaxing, others leaping to attention. He manages to get the spit down, but all the tiny hairs on his arms stand up in a collectively rigid salute.

Is Toph… being cuddly?

"Go back to sleep," she encourages him, drowsy. "If you want." Her thigh ripples under his cheek, living granite. _Here_, it says. _Use me as a pillow. _

Toph is _totally _being cuddly.

Sokka processes this. It takes a while—long enough that he does actually start to flirt with the idea of sleep again. As grey heaviness tugs at his consciousness, though, it occurs to him that it's _Toph _he's essentially snuggling with here in a morning meadow, Toph Bei Fong, and his heart catapults up into his mouth for reasons he doesn't really want to think about too hard right now. That muscle's painful lurch in his chest only intensifies too when the thought happens upon Sokka that she must know how he's feeling, sure, what with her magical feet and all. And? _And_? And she's not teasing him about it.

What does _that _mean?

"What does this mean?" he asks her. Might as well get right to the point. He's a practical man, Sokka. Not to mention a confused man. Toph's thigh is just so… so _nice _and her hand, yeah, that feels pretty good too and as much as this whole thing is weird it's also the definition of awesome, and if he'd known it was gonna happen he might've gotten up earlier, Spirits—

"It's my basic philosophy behind Earthbending," she replies. Her fingertips find a small scar near his temple and rub it curiously—he got it the first time he ever threw his dearly departed Boomerang, not that he'll ever tell her so. Anyway, she doesn't ask. "Wait and listen for the right moment to strike," comes the recitation, Toph's tone that of the teacher she's been since before she was even a teenager. "When that moment arrives, strike without fear or hesitation."

"Right," agrees Sokka. "Sure. Got it." And then, "Uhm. Huh?"

He looks up at her, noticing belatedly the stripe of dirt on her cheek and the glaze of ash in her singed hair. She slept too close to the fire, probably, and she hasn't even washed her face yet. She doesn't look like she's woken up entirely either, her expression dozy, her silver eyes distant. …err. Well. More distant than usual.

She smiles, flattening her hand against his head. The touch is a fond one. There's no mistaking it. Sokka's chest does a funny hitching clench in its wake.

"I got up earlier and I knew I wouldn't have to wait for the right moment much longer," she allows. "I don't know _how _I knew, because I didn't hear anything except your snoring, but I _did _know. So. I just—yeah. Came here. I think—" A pause. Her throat works. But she finishes, firm, "I think it's nice."

Sokka drops his eyes back to their surroundings, gives them a cursory glance. "It's really nice," he assures her. You know—just to make conversation. "You've got your pretty sunrise, your dew-shiny meadow, your gentle breeze…" He trails off. With every word his chin and cheek brush her thigh, delicate touches where Toph has never been touched before, or at least he doesn't think so, and the bridge of her nose is pink and her smile's twitching at the corner like maybe she wants to laugh, and why hasn't he pulled away yet—

"What moment were you waiting for exactly?" he interrupts his own musings. "Did it happen? Did you… what was it you said? Strike without fear or hesitation?"

Her retort is immediate. "Do I look scared to you, Snoozles?"

He checks. A branch of fresh sunlight crawls over her face, glances sharp against her pewter gaze. "Nope," he answers.

She proceeds, "Hesitant?" Her thumb's tracing his ear now, the rasp of her work-worn skin on his flesh making his neck all warm and tingly. Tingly in the _good _way.

"That's definitely a no," he grates, tipping his head the _tiniest _bit into her touch.

"Ah-huh." Her sleepy smile widens into a grin and her fingers, Spirits, when did her fingers get like that, so nimble and quick—they trickle down his ear to the lobe. Said lobe is given a gentle, squeezing pinch. Sokka shivers. He squirms shamelessly closer, hooking his arm in a loose curl around her ankle.

For a few moments they stay this way, Sokka with his head cushioned on the thigh of the most dangerous woman on the continent, Toph letting her hand wander over the tribesman's skull and teapot-handle ears. Her fingers drift no lower than his jaw because maybe she likes those ears, wants to lavish attention on their sheer manliness—or it could just be that she isn't feeling the urge to bend her knees. Or maybe—and Sokka is both scared and weirdly exultant, pondering this—she doesn't want to jostle his cheek away.

Maybe she likes having it there as much as he does.

Gradually her hand stills, her fingers flared in a cradle over half his face, their ends almost touching his lips. She smells a little like Piandao's smithy where he made Space Sword so many years ago, hot and metallic and simmering. Against his cheek he can feel her lifeline and he breathes into its crease, willing it deeper, longer despite that he's not even remotely an Earthbender like the woman to whom it belongs.

_Wikka-wikka-weet _whistles the bird Sokka heard earlier, stronger this time.

He ventures in the following quiet, "You were waiting for the right moment to do this?" Just to make sure she knows what he's talking about, he pumps his eyebrow under the press of her palm and clarifies, "To make cuddles with me?"

"Yep," she affirms. Her thumb brushes beneath his eye, a ginger, probing crescent. The ragged nail scratches a little and Sokka can't really bring himself to wince. "Is it a problem?" she demands suddenly. Her eyes rove in his general direction; somewhere down under his ankle, her toes contract.

"Cuddling? No, no." Rolling his shoulders in a shrug and nuzzling in just a _teensy _bit more, Sokka imparts, "Your leg's comfortable. And"—he pitches his voice deep for effect—"you give good head-scritches." He watches Toph through his lashes to see how she takes this.

"Oh." She blinks once, twice. Grins. The expression is every kind of smug. Also sharklike. "Cool."

They drift into that calm almost-silence again. Even though it's pretty much the designation of strange sitting with Toph like this, Sokka finds himself listing the situation's perks. Number one: he's not getting his arm, shoulder, or general upper body pulverized by Toph's ridiculously hard and ridiculously tiny fists. Two: it's quieter here in the meadow than it was at their campsite. Downright peaceful, in fact. He might've given up on sleep already, but he has enough on his plate right now, thank you, and he truly does appreciate the serenity.

Three is the best perk of all: Toph likes him enough to cuddle with him and admit she's doing it.

Sokka's known about her crush on him for years. It wasn't exactly subtle on her part: the blushing, the stammering, the love-taps. She's blind, sure, but _he _isn't and hasn't ever been, and he's almost positive Toph's had a thing for him since she was twelve years old. She's been his best friend since then too, of course. She waded through the end of a war with him; dealt with the aftermath of that war by initiating peacemaking endeavors at his side. She's seen his relationships start and stop and held his head over a hastily grabbed pot as he vomited up the worst of his post-breakup woes. Now she lets him travel with her across the broad Earth Kingdom as she searches out new members for Ba Sing Se's next Dai Li. King Kuei requested her services personally. Literally—he showed up at her parents' house in Gaoling on his litter. They—her parents, that is—couldn't be prouder of her.

Sokka fell into traveling with Toph at some point near the start of her tenure as the Earth King's scout. After all, someone's got to read and write her messenger hawk correspondence for her. Occasionally he breaks away from her company to visit his sister and eventual brother-in-law, to attend diplomatic meetings, or to make a nuisance of himself at the Fire Lord's winery. Never more than a season rolls by, though, before he finds himself casting his shadow over hers again. They've walked away three years together, off and on.

Three years. Sokka wonders at the number, turning his head into Toph's palm. Three whole _years _she's waited for this—more than that, maybe. No, scratch that: _definitely_. He's certain she's been waiting since… since…

"_Well, I think you all look perfect!" _Her voice echoes to him across time, and he remembers the ginger sidle of her eyes toward him. The roll of her feet, seeking his smile. The leer of her mouth when she found it.

Since…

Before their adulthood travels started and after the Suki-breakup disaster, he wondered briefly if Toph even liked him still. If she'd say anything then, when he was sniveling and vulnerable and single. She was almost eighteen when it happened, pretty in the same rough way a blade is pretty, and the night she located his miserable, moaning carcass at the Kyoshi tavern, she offered him no stuttering confession, no red-cheeked kiss. She instead provided him a shoulder to cry on, a chasm-tearing hand to pat his back, and told him in a voice laced with disgust, "Man up, Snoozles." She then bought him a thimble-sized portion of the best Ember Island Firewhiskey brewed in six centuries.

Sometimes Sokka still thinks he feels it burning holes in his gut.

_Three years. Three years and then some._

What she didn't show him that night in the tavern she's shown him in spades since then, small signs of sincere care. She goes the color of new bricks when they touch hands, and she was especially pink-nosed that time they wandered into a harvest festival and he got her to dance with him. He's drifted out of sleep at the fireside more than once and caught her resting her cheek against his shoulder. She pretends to suck at swimming just so he'll conduct remedial lessons.

Toph's been waiting—and listening—a long time.

It's not like she's had to do it alone, though. Not always. He hasn't been following Toph around for three whole years, Sokka admits to himself as her thigh flexes under his cheek, just to sightsee.

It hasn't really been a conscious thing, his pursuit of her. It's just been normal to be with her—to hear her bellow at bartenders at night and to feel her intent quiet as she listens to him spin his stories, his hopes, his dreams in the afternoons they spend together, their footprints stretching back out for miles behind them.

Maybe, he thinks as he glances up at her through the slant of her fingers, mornings are supposed to be this way too. Maybe _this _is what's normal.

Exhaling between her thumb and forefinger, he puts forth, "So. Toph."

"Uh-huh?" She shifts a bit. Her hand falls away from his cheek and she lets it hang near the back of his neck somewhere.

That small separation feels like the greatest rift in the world to Sokka, and he's only marginally surprised at himself when he rocks forward onto his knees, spins around, seizes the tiny pale appendage that started all this trouble, and clutches it fast between his own desperate hands. Their fingers twine, curl into hooks and Toph blinks, her head cocked—she smirks at him too, and a dark clump of dirt-specked hair falls into her face.

"Well?" she persists.

"Are you maybe"—he forces the words out; Sokka's patient and so is Toph in her own special way, but really, Spirits, this has gone on long enough now—"waiting for anything else?"

The sunrise gleams in her eyes, coloring them golden-pink-red and Sokka leans in, close and then closer, his breath tickling over her brow. He tries very hard to listen and all he can hear is the roar of his heart in his ears and the whistle of air in his chest, and when she angles her head up a little bit he decides that seriously, waiting and listening is for Earthbenders, and so he crushes his face to hers to kiss her.

It's a crappy kiss. Their teeth meet and he bites her without meaning to, and she jerks under him, almost knees him in the kidney. She tears her hand from between his palms and her mouth parts against his, and just as he thinks she's going to brain him and scream some insult about his ancestry over his bleeding corpse, she groans, "I _hate _waiting," and her fingers twist in his hair, his shirt. She drags him close.

She kisses him back.


	12. Forgiveness

**Commentary**: Shortfic is short. Expect several more of these over the next few days. I need to get back in the swing of things.

**Words**: 500

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**Word EIGHTEEN: Forgiveness**

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She inhales, filling her lungs like a bellows. _Hnnnnn_. Her chest expands, the buttons atop her tunic shifting in their eyeholes. Slippery and soft with sweat, her arms slide outward, elbows creaking, small fingers dark and crooked over the siltbed in which she crouches. She traces patterns with those fingers and her head slowly fills with the silver recognition of the world around her, not that she could begin to know what silver really is.

She exhales. _Haaaaaaah_.

Behind her clearing, a twig cracks. She straightens from the crouch to a full-fledged standing position: her knees pop, first one and then its sibling, the twin sounds thunderous in the surrounding wood. Shaking her legs to free her thighs of pins and needles, she turns. She grunts, "Yeah?"

_Ptta-ptta-ptta-krch_—staggered footsteps and another victimized twig. "No sneaking up on you, is there?" asks Sokka. A decade has done nothing to soften the admiration in his voice, and for that Gaoling's longtime Earth Rumble Champion smirks. She makes a little bow in her fanboy's direction.

"Not unless you learn to fly, Snoozles."

"Yeah, about that…" Stopping at the edge of the clearing, Sokka leans against the nearest tree, scuffs his boot. It takes him a moment to catch his breath. "Practicing?" he ventures at last.

"Uh-huh."

"You don't usually practice," he observes. He thus asks without asking, squinting at the silhouette of his best friend in the thicket's morning dapple.

Toph likes that he got right to the point anyway. "Feeling a little lame," she admits, working her shoulders into a scrunching pivot. Muscles stretch, bunch—her tunic rides up over the faint flare of her hips and her fingers move to worry the buttons of the garment free. She licks her lips, tosses it away. Standing there in her underthings, smudges of the forest's renderings smeared across her limbs, Toph looks feral.

"Lame," Sokka echoes.

Toph flicks her wrist. An Appa-sized lump of soil parts from the clearing's floor and rises into the air sidelong, bristling with roots, studded by diamond-hard rock teeth. She hurls it westward, listening with satisfaction to the buckling roar of trees as they splinter and fall under the onslaught. Flocks of birds take startled flight. A badgerfrog in the wrong place at the wrong time meets its maker with an accompanying _squeep_.

The ground trembles. Toph does too.

She sinks into the crouch again, choking on the lump in her throat_._

"Hey," Sokka begins, limping forward a pace. His bandages rasp over his vest and they freeze, the two friends, paralyzed by the poison in that small skittery sound.

Finally Sokka says, "It wasn't your fault."

But his heartbeat lurches and it _was_ her fault, it was, it _was. _They both know it, and she turns away from him with a single bitter shiver.

Time stretches, strains, but then: _ptta-ptta-ptta_. He steps to her gingerly, painfully; his palms frame her shoulders. He gives them a squeeze.

"It's _okay_," he revises, and his pulse chugs along steadily.


	13. Hobby

**Commentary: **I hadn't updated this a while, so I figured I'd give it some love today rather than my other Tokka project. =) Set during the series, after Toph learns Metalbending.

**Words: **1,375

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**Word NINETEEN: Hobby**

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Toph scratches a bite on her thigh. Scrubs her ankles together. Twitches her mouth. Rubs her buttock on a rock (like her thigh, it itches too—the mosquitoes this year are persistent).

She sighs, loudly.

"This is stupid," she professes.

"You have absolutely no patience," Sokka growls, propped on his elbows in the grass at her left. His lips are pursed and his voice comes out muffled: he's chewing something. A weed he plucked. Its smell is acrid and its taste can't be much better, but Toph surmises that he probably thinks it looks cool and is thus obliged to suffer it a while.

"You have absolutely no idea how moronic a suggestion it was," the girl replies, "to take a blind Earthbender _fishing_."

Sokka swizzles the weed around in his mouth. "It wasn't moronic," he responds, watching a dragonfly alight on his best friend's crop of jagged black bangs. Trembles of the dragonfly's wings send rainbow spangles she'll never see over her face: she swats at the insect, misses. "It'll teach you serenity, something you sorely lack. Besides," he points out, and the dragonfly takes meandering flight again, "you seemed pretty eager to tag along."

_Shk-shk-krnch _as she rolls onto her back in the grass, flinging her arms behind her head. She bumps his shoulder. He bobbles: the fishing line wiggles and the lure in the water plunks low. In a swirl of silt, the massive fish nibbling at the bait disappears back into the depths of the stream.

Sokka scowls stormily at the other teen.

Toph cups her hand about her ear and observes, "Hark! Heartbeat's up, Snoozles. And your teeth, wow—I can hear them grinding and I'm not even listening that hard. What was that you were saying about serenity?"

Fuming, Sokka reels his line back in, adjusts the drippy, half-eaten bait on its hook, and recasts it out toward a different part of the stream. _Ploonk! _The weighted lure breaks the shimmery surface, drifts. Sinks. Watching it, the youth suddenly has an idea.

"Hey," he says, and sits up, "Toph. Gimme your hands."

"What for?" Determined to be contrary, Toph thrusts those very appendages out of reach.

"I wanna try something. C'mon," he wheedles. "If it works, I promise you won't think fishing is stupid anymore."

"I think you're full of bisonshit," Toph singsongs.

"Yeah, well, _your mom_. Gimme your hands, Toph."

With an explosive sigh and a mutter about weak-minded fools, Toph rocks into a crosslegged position and provides Sokka her palms. The surfaces are smooth and stony, their calluses glinting in the afternoon sun. Sokka wastes no time sticking the base of his fishing pole between them.

"Uh, Snoozles?" the Earthbender deadpans. She fingers the rod, curious and detached at once, definitely not impressed by this idea. "Do I _really _have to tell you why this is not going to work?"

"Here"—Sokka ignores her—"grip the base hard in your left hand." Scooting close enough to Toph to bump hips with her, he shows her what he means, guiding her fingers under the furl of his own. "Now take your right hand and put it on the reel."

"The what?" Toph gropes along the pole.

"The spin-y metal thing. This." Shamelessly he seizes her wandering digits and steers them to the spot in question.

Clutching now at the wheel around which the taut fishing line has been woven, Toph explores it, running her touch along and across the device. Suddenly she stiffens—her breath catches and her hands clench convulsively. Under her ministrations the pole quivers.

"Easy," Sokka cautions her, watching the lure list in the stream. "You'll scare the fish again."

"I can _see_—" she begins, and then she bites off whatever she was going to say, her eyes squinted almost shut, her mouth drawn into a tight, concentrated pucker. More slowly than before she runs her fingers over the reel and the line it controls. "I can see the spin-y thing you were talking about," she resumes. "And the line—it runs up through three little hoops on the pole and then it goes out that way"—she points—"and in the water it's tied to a… a thing, a round thing—"

"The bobber," Sokka put in helpfully.

"—and below that there's a double-pronged hook at the end." Toph inhales, boredom forgotten. "How?" she demands of Sokka, baring her teeth in his direction. "How can I see all that? I get why, what did you call it—the reel? Yeah. I get why I can see _that_. It's metal! But the line—"

"Is infused with lead," says Sokka, smug.

Another dragonfly buzzes between them. Lurching forward, Toph hisses, "There are—oh man, Sokka, there are _things in there _and they're nibbling at whatever's on the hook!"

Sokka crouches next to Toph, eager. "You can really see them?"

"Yeah! I mean—sorta, a little. They're pretty blurry—"

"You're doing better than me," the tribesman praises. He doesn't really mean it to be flattering, probably, but Toph's cheeks frost pink and she grins anyway, ducking her head. "Right"—Sokka is abruptly businesslike—"looks like you're in charge of dinner, Toph. How big are the things nibbling the bait now?"

"Uhm." Despite that it does her no good, the Earthbender instinctively squints. "Couple inches long? They look like arrowheads, all flickering around and stuff."

Sokka deems those, "Minnows. Not worth it. Wait for something big, okay?"

"How big?"

"If you can manage it, around as long as my forearm." He flexes that manly apparatus. "You've gotta _entice _that kind of fish, though. Twitch the bait around a bit—make it look like it's alive. Here"—and Sokka closes his hands over Toph's again—"let me show you."

A few minutes later, when Toph has demonstrated that she understands the basics of fish seduction, they hunker together on the stream's bank and stare—in their own special ways—at the bobber in the water. Toph barely breathes. Sokka decimates another weed in slow, measured chomps. The wind stirs their sweaty hair and the world seems balanced on the prick of a needle.

"Why do you have a lead line anyway?" asks the former at last, moving her lips as little as possible. "Not typical, is it?" Adjusting the trace of her fingers over the spool in the reel, she murmurs, "I thought this stuff was supposed to be thinner."

"Usually it is. Most of the time it's not woven with any metal filaments either." Sokka spits. It comes out bright green. He wishes he could tell Toph how awesome it is and have her understand. "We use this kind at home sometimes, though. It's for deepwater fishing—you know, to make the line sink, and to haul in really big fish. I've been carrying it around since we left because I didn't know what to expect; it's the most durable thing I could find." Reaching over to give it a tweak next to her thumb, he finishes, "I used it today because this current's moving pretty fas—"

"Big one," Toph interjects. She's rigid as an icicle suddenly, and her hand tightens with such strength around the pole's base that it creaks in protest. "Really, really big one. Sokka, wow, it's _huge_, it's—what do I _do_? What—"

The bobber disappears underwater, _sker-plunk_. Toph shrieks—"It was a loud, ferocious war cry!" she'll tell people later—and leaps to her feet. Sokka watches as she jerks the pole aloft, twists it—watches as she Bends the line in a hurried jerk back toward the bank, too excited to remember to reel. The fish, unable to resist Toph's yank, comes sailing through the stream's surface, skips across it a few times, and lands with a slippery _smuck! _in the grass between them.

For a moment, there is no sound.

But, "Ha," Toph says. Her sides heave and she wheezes, "Ha—aha, ahahaha, AHA_HAHA! _DID YOU SEE THAT?" She spins to face Sokka, beaming. The pole clatters to the ground, the poor fish gasps desperately, and the girl who caught it hooks her hands into claws and hisses, "DID YOU? _DID YOU_?"

"Still think fishing's boring?" ventures the tribesman.

Toph's victorious whoop echoes for miles.


	14. Voyeur

**Commentary: **If you're confused after reading this, Google 'going commando.' =)

**Words: **500

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**Word TWENTY: Voyeur **

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They were doing the group's laundry when Sokka asked the question.

Toph didn't expect it at all, really. She knew Sokka was the analytical sort, sure, knew his mind was always whittling and working away at stuff, but not until he opened his mouth and voiced his query did the Earthbender have any idea that the warrior ever thought about _her_.

"Hey, Toph." It started out just like that, so innocent, so quick. Slapping what she hoped was a mostly clean loincloth against a wide smooth rock nearby her hip, Toph didn't answer at first. She was too immersed in her task, too sunken in the rhythm of the creek running over her feet, to acknowledge Sokka yet. Methodically she wrung out the loincloth, gave it another round of the rock-slap-wham treatment, and hung it on the line they'd strung up together in a square of sunlight. The wet fabric dripped and whuckered in the spring's rising breeze. Toph's hands stung—she flexed them, willing away their tingle. Suds rolled down her bare legs under the cuffs of the pants she'd rucked up, and the faint but reeking scent of lye clung to her. With a brusque sneeze and a well-placed snot-hawk, she reached for the next article of clothing.

"Hey," Sokka revisited, tone almost petulant. "_Toph_."

"'Sup, Snoozles?" Toph fondled the thing she'd picked up. A sock? No—too big, too cuppy. Katara's bra. Aww _man_. She plunged it mercilessly into the creek and hoped she'd never need such a harness herself.

"I was just wondering something," Sokka informed her. _Whuck! _He slammed a heavy garment into their washing rock. The ensuing vibrations through the stones on the creekbed painted a picture for Toph of Sokka leaning down partway, all the little muscles in his back aligned in a ridge. His arms were like thick twists of rope and his legs forked out in a strong martial stance despite his not being a Bender. Secretly she approved of the posture. He pursued, "How well can you see with those feet of yours exactly? Also"—fabric squelched under his hands—"you should really consider, you know, not rolling around in the dirt all the time if you want these clothes to last you. They're pretty filthy and I don't think I'm gonna be able to get these stains out."

"Thanks for that sage advice, _Mom_."

"I'm serious!" Toph got the idea that Sokka was scowling at her. She loved it when people scowled—it meant their faces made canyons, and canyons were anything if not simple for an Earthbender of Toph's caliber to read. "They're falling apart too—this sleeve is about to come off! And you have like, what? One outfit?"

Such was the perfect opportunity for Toph to answer Sokka's question. "Look who's talking, Commando Man."

The creek burbled.

"…you can _tell_?" Sokka squawked at last, horrified.

Toph planted a dripping foot on the washrock. Wiggling its toes, she agreed, "Flippity flop, Snoozles. Flippity"—and she smirked—"_flop_."


	15. Wonder

**Commentary**: Dark. Stop at the line in the center of this story if you don't want_ dark_.

**Words**: 1,000

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**Word TWENTY-ONE: Wonder**

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The firelight dances across the clearing they're sharing tonight, painting faces in whickering yellows and oranges. Shadows run and ripple too, like the mouths of carnival masks; in the distance a stream chortles, and the stars overhead loom low and bright. Katara is telling a story. It's something mushy about two people, two best friends and one's unrequited love for the other, and Sokka is pretty sure his sister is pulling it all straight out of her ass.

Muffling a yawn between his fingers, the warrior flicks his eyes to the Avatar, who is leaning forward over their fire with his tattooed arms folded and his mouth slack, his attention wholeheartedly devoted to the Waterbender weaving the tale. The younger boy doesn't seem to care whether Katara's story is true or not. As she comes to a particularly wrenching part—"And the girl, oh, _oh_, she had to watch him embrace and kiss another, and he was never aware of her sorrow; for that and for every fondness he bestowed upon that other, her heart broke a thousand-thousand times"—the world's supposed savior produces a faint, quivery sigh. Sokka watches in disbelief as Aang actually reaches up to brush away a tear. A _tear_!

"Oh c'mon," he whispers disgustedly. "Give me a _break_. Stupid sissy stuff, am I right?" He directs this opinion at the member of their group absolutely guaranteed to agree with him, nudging out with his elbow. He turns to exchange a grin with her.

But Toph's face is clenched in a horrified stone grimace, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut. "What happened to her?" she demands. To Sokka her voice sounds queer and drawn and hoarse, pulled from somewhere deep inside. He stares at her, startled, and she repeats in a strained hiss, "Well? What _happened _to her?"

Over the fire Aang and Katara share a glance. Something passes between them—something that prickles at Sokka's awareness but nevertheless escapes understanding. The Avatar's expression is momentarily panicked—Katara just looks sad. Forcing her lips into a smile that's too wide, too determinedly cheery, Sokka's sister insists, "Oh, well, uh… eventually the guy grew a brain and—and he _noticed _his best friend's love for him, and, uhm… and he kissed her under the moonlight and they lived happily ever after—"

"You're lying." Toph sits up straight and those words fall from her mouth like blades, sharp and shining in the dark. "You're _lying_," she says again, angrily this time, and in the next instant she's up on her feet and walking away from them into the surrounding forest. The breeze from her passing slaps Sokka's cheek. He pivots on his butt to watch her disappear into the murk, her squared shoulders like a wall, her footstomps _stup-stup-stupping _into eventual quiet.

"What just happened?" he ventures into the stunned silence of the clearing, but for the briefest moment he thinks he might already know. The idea nibbles along his perception and his head fills up with half-formed muddy pictures of—of _something_, and that something might just be a someone, and that someone might be Toph, and Toph might—

A stick in the fire pops. Jerked out of his reverie, Sokka shakes his head, misses the helpless glare Katara directs his way, and mutters, "Nah."

As his sister launches into another tale, though, and Sokka's side chills without the buffer of his best friend there to warm it, the warrior looks back into the trees and wonders.

* * *

The firelight dances across the battlefield they're sharing tonight, painting faces in whickering yellows and oranges. Shadows run and ripple too, like the mouths of carnival masks; in the distance a horn sounds, and the stars overhead are obscured by thick curtains of smoke. Wide and staring and dim, Toph's eyes are telling a story. It's something mushy about two people, two best friends and one's unrequited love for the other, and Sokka is pretty sure it was told to him a long time ago because it's just so _familiar—_

"Hey," he whispers to her, clutching her close. "Hey, Toph, come on." She's so little in his arms, so little and light and limp and oh Spirits it _terrifies _him. Her head lolls in his elbow and leaves a wet, sticky trail there. A stippled burn walks up her cheek. "Keep it up, okay? Keep it together," he demands. "You've got this, really—Katara'll be here soon and—"

Her eyes. Her eyes are telling a story. Blind they might be but Sokka, yes, _Sokka _can see what's in them and it's a saga of longing, longing for things she has always wanted and never been given, and his belly crawls and his heart shrivels in guilt as she opens her mouth, choking on the blood in it, to grate, "_Sokka_…"

Her blackened arm rises, reaching for him. It trembles midair and falls again and she frowns, her lips dribbling, her teeth crimson. "Sokka," she tries a second time. "Sokka, I—"

Her jaw, her throat—they work weakly, desperately. Her eyes are telling a story and it's so familiar it hurts and suddenly Sokka thinks that it needs to change, this story, because it's going nowhere fast and he remembers

_he kissed her under the moonlight and they lived happily ever after_

If there is a moon tonight he can't know, the sky so covered in its puttied paste of warmongering, but it doesn't matter and he drops his head and

_kissed her under the moonlight kissed moonlight kissed happily ever after_

rasps his lips against Toph's.

Under him she convulses. Her lashes quiver over his cheek. Her chin jerks, jars his and then Katara's there on her knees beside them, shoving him away and shouting and Sokka, bowled backward, looks down wishing hoping praying for

_happily_

Toph to just grin and tell him, "About time, Snoozles." But she is still, so still, and in her eyes

_ever after_

the story is over.


	16. Size

**Commentary**: Following the last update's rather somber addition, here's something a bit more (introspectively) lighthearted. =) I hope you enjoy it!

Also, thank you so much for all your reviews, alerts, and favorites. I don't know what I've done to deserve the attention, but I certainly do appreciate it.

**Words: **1,850

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**Word TWENTY-TWO: Size**

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"What's that?" asked Sokka.

Lifting his head drowsily from its pillow against the edge of Appa's saddle, Aang blinked at his friend. The older boy sat rigid in the dip between the sky bison's massive shoulders, his legs stuck out on either side of the great furry neck like sticks. In his hands the reins were clenched tight and taut. They creaked, and at Aang's side Katara roused and murmured thickly, her braids straggling into her face, "The trip's over already?" With one hand she brushed away the errant loops. "Are we there?"

Sokka ignored her and repeated, gesturing, "What's that?"

Aang straightened. His eyes followed Sokka's motion out westward across the horizon, where the orange blur of the sunset-engorged sky met the land's curved, vulnerable belly. At first he noticed nothing unusual: an endless sea of grains rippling and undulating, their heads full of seed thrust up and in their midst the occasional purple wildflower bobbing like a friendly stranger. He squinted. He concentrated. The falling sunlight made white-hot starbursts in his vision and he asked Sokka, "What's what?"

A heartbeat later, though, he saw it.

It was a bridge between the sky and the world below, a finger stretching down. It was the same color as the clouds and it was moving without footsteps, without strides, without gait—it was _breathing _but it was not alive, or at least Aang didn't think so. Though he'd never seen anything like it before, old stories from the monks tickled at the edges of his memory, whispers, warnings. Instincts and adrenaline throbbed into the drum of his heart. Leaving Katara temporarily—by now she was looking out over the land too, curious; she hadn't seen it yet—Aang slid into the available slot next to Sokka and perched there. He jangled his knees, leaning forward into the wind—he took the reins from Sokka, snapped them. Appa moaned, listing east.

"A twisterclone," said Aang quietly. From Katara crept a small gasp: the Avatar glanced over his shoulder and saw that she'd spotted it. "That's what it is," he resumed, nodding at Sokka. "At least, I'm pretty sure. I've never actually seen one—but the monks, they told me about them."

"Are they dangerous?" Sokka clutched at his boomerang. He aimed a scowl toward the distant churning thing. "And anyway, it's great it has a name and all, but Aang—what exactly _is _it?"

"Air," replied Aang. He tugged the reins again and Appa coasted low, drifting down a thermal's fading swell to the ground below. As the bison's six massive feet dropped into the grass and found purchase there, he continued, "All kinds of air twisting together, like—"

"Why did we stop?" demanded a brisk voice from behind them. Aang turned; Katara and Sokka blinked backward. At the rear of the saddle Toph sat with her hair mussed and one cheek red from where it had been pressed to the group's food rucksack. Rubbing that cheek, she stretched her free arm out, found Katara's sleeve, and tugged it. "Well?" insisted the Earthbender. "Hello? Are we being attacked? Because I don't hear any emotionally constipated princes and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, which I never am, by the way"—Katara rolled her eyes—"but those tend to be _pretty _loud."

"There's something in the sky," supplied Sokka helpfully. "Aang says it's a twisterclone. And it's made of air. Different _kinds_," he stressed, "of air."

Expressionless, Toph considered this a moment.

"Something in the _sky_," she said finally. "Made of _air_."

Sokka agreed, "Uh-huh."

"Different kinds," revisited the Earthbender. "Of _air_."

"Yep!"

"Well!" Flinging both arms high, Toph beamed. "That clears things _right _up. Thanks, Sokka. You're a real pal. _Will someone with an actual brain please tell me what's going on?_"

"It's a special meeting of warm and cool air—a very strong and specific kind of storm," Aang soothed his irate teacher. "It's essentially a really huge rotating column of wind." Dropping the reins into his lap, he provided the nervous siblings—and the dubious Toph—a reassuring smile. "It might be dangerous," he clarified, answering Sokka's earlier question, "if we let it get too close, but there's plenty of space between it and us now. If it starts to head this way, we can take evasive action."

"Why not do that now?" Katara pursued. "Why don't we just get away from it?"

"We need to go that way," Sokka sighed. He pointed in the twisterclone's direction, morose.

"And if we do have to make a really quick break for it, it might be a good idea to let Appa rest for a while," finished Aang. Leaning over, he gave the bison's ear a scratch. An appreciative low shook the saddle.

"Whatsamatter, Twinkles?" asked Toph. She looped her arms behind her head and grinned blithely toward Aang. "You said yourself it's just air. Can't you Bend it?"

"No more than Katara can Bend an ocean," disagreed the slender boy, "or you a mountain."

"I'm pretty sure I could Bend a mountain." Toph feigned studying her dirt-encrusted nails. "But I get your meaning." Resting her free hand on the edge of the saddle, she rocked into a crouch. "Since we're having a rest, I'm going to go take care of some business. I'll be back in a bit."

Gaze trained worriedly on the wedge-shaped smudge in the distance, Katara shook her head. "It's not a good idea for you to go by yourself," she decided. With a firm finger she jabbed her brother in the knee. "Sokka, go with Toph."

"Katara," the Earthbender declared patiently, "I have to pee."

"Yeah, Katara." Sokka shrugged. "She has to pee."

"I don't care! Go with her!" snapped the Waterbender. "Now!" One hand sank to hover threateningly near the cap of her waterskin.

Sokka sighed, showed his sibling his palms in a gesture of peace, and stood. "C'mon," he grouched to the smallest member of their group. "She just wants an excuse to hang out with Aang alone." He heaved himself down into the waving grasses.

Bestowing kissy noises to the red-faced Katara and shyly grinning Aang, Toph summoned a pillar of earth to the saddle's edge in a wiggle of fingers and followed Sokka.

The grains swallowed her whole. Brushing a seed-heavy stalk from nearby her nose, the Earthbender stomped to her waiting friend and encouraged him, the crown of her head only just visible, "Move your feet, Snoozles." Her hand found his wrist and she dragged him away from the reclining bison.

They walked for a while in silence, Toph in front and carving a small path through the sea of soft growth, Sokka trailing and keeping an eye on the far-off storm. "Can you see it?" he asked finally, turning his attention to the short girl leading him into the wilderness. "The twisterclone?"

"Not really," said Toph cheerily. "It must be hovering or something. I've gotten a few glimpses—nothing definite." She stopped, slamming her foot down into the loamy soil beneath the plants. "Nah," she resumed. "I don't know what it looks like to you, but it's not touching the ground right now."

Sokka squinted across the rippling expanse of the plains at the storm. "Really? You think it can do that—hit the ground and draw itself up again?"

"I dunno. I guess." Toph shrugged, the green of her tunic almost lost in the swell of the grasses. "I'm not the person to ask about the weather. I _have _sort of seen it a couple of times, though, so it must be jumping around." She nudged an elbow the way of the twisterclone. "Looks like a giant thumb, right?"

Surveying the twisterclone again, Sokka nodded thoughtfully. "That's actually a pretty apt description, O Blind Poetess."

Toph smirked. "What can I say? I'm a pure artist with words. Now." She twirled a finger midair. "Make like the big bad windbag and turn around, buddy."

Sokka obeyed. Drawing up a thin dome of rock around herself for good measure, Toph disappeared. Left thus to his own devices, the tribesman meandered a small distance away and up the crest of a hill upon which the grasses were patchier, shorter, presumably because of the wind's constant barrage. Looking left, he could make out Appa's bulk in the fading light and, if he strained his eyes, the dots of Aang and Katara too atop the bison's saddle. Looking right, the twisterclone took up the horizon, a massive smear of strangeness maybe a league distant.

Sokka was still trying to decide what color it was when it touched the earth.

The impact wasn't violent so much as it was loud: with a snarling roar the twisterclone tore into the plains and wrestled up a heaving cloud of soil, grains, dust. The soil blackened the lurching column such that it danced like a shadow against the dimming skyline, taller than imagination, stronger than measure. Even across the distance between them Sokka could hear rocks grinding as the twisterclone ripped them aloft and threw them together, and he opened his mouth to shout for Toph only to look down and find her hand on his arm.

"Huh," she said. She cocked her head toward the twisterclone, mouth pursed, eyes narrowed. The skin of her cheek pulled as she chewed at it, and after a moment she provided again, "_Huh_." Her fingers slid down into his elbow.

"What?" Sokka asked the Earthbender. He blurted, "Are you scared?"

Toph dug her nails into his flesh. "Unlike some people very close by, I'm not afraid of _air_," she disagreed. She nevertheless sidled closer to the tribesman, and in the stubborn contours of her face Sokka saw something he recognized as—admittedly reluctant—awe. "It just goes on forever, doesn't it?" wondered his friend after a moment. "On and on in all directions."

"The twisterclone?" asked Sokka.

"No, you idiot." Toph glared at him. She pitched a hand aright. "The _sky_."

Sokka looked up. Overhead the day's faint blue luster was fading to mauve as evening approached; toward the storm and the horizon behind it the clouds grew darker still, a myriad deep purples and violets lanced by the occasional tangerine streak. Though its colors would always be lost on Toph, she could now understand—for the first time, Sokka realized with a jolt—the sky's true immensity.

"Yeah," he said softly, turning his eyes from said sky to his best friend. "Yeah, it's pretty huge."

Wordless, Toph left off her hold of Sokka's sleeve and took a seat on the crest of the small hill, pressing her soles and her palms flat to its surface. She closed her eyes—she fell still, perhaps mapping out the expanse that had before escaped her grounded grasp. As the twisterclone tore furrows through the plains and ultimately churned in the direction opposite them, Sokka stepped behind the Earthbender and rested his hands on the little mountains that made up Toph's shoulders.

When she didn't shrug them away, Sokka glanced heavenward and wondered if—maybe for the first time—Toph felt small.


	17. Talent

**Commentary: **Hold up! =B

**Words: **1,000

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**Word TWENTY-THREE: Talent**

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Meetings, agendas, and the task of peacekeeping kept them apart a year. Sokka labored under a mountain of treaties on Kyoshi Island; Toph labored under an actual mountain in Omashu, carving tunnels through which the city's mail system could expand to the region's outlying villages. When they finished their tasks, instinct and the general desire they each had to visit the other drove the two warriors to their group's customary meeting spot in Ba Sing Se. The stars aligned such that there was a massive party on tap at The Jasmine Dragon the same night as Toph and Sokka's arrival. Meant to commemorate the birthday of the Fire Lord's first child, the party promised a hearty celebration. _I'll see you there, hahaha_, Toph's scribe wrote in a letter to Sokka. _We can admire the drooling pink thing together, pretend it's cute, and then I'll race you to the bar where we can REALLY admire all those whiskies Iroh's started importing._

As fate would have it, though, Sokka never got a glimpse of the Fire Nation's recent lordlet, much less Iroh's newest selection of spirits. Walking into The Jasmine Dragon at twilight's end, nudging through the thickening crowd of curious passersby, he was almost instantly served a cup of his favorite tea and ensconced in the arms of his blind best friend. It was there, tucked fast under the granite circle of her embrace, that Sokka found himself distracted by something completely unexpected.

Two somethings.

He thrust Toph out to arm's length and looked down between them. "Hold up," he said, staring. "Hold _up_. _Toph_. What are those?"

Toph blinked at him. Maybe she'd expected their reunion to be a bit less accusatory. "What are what?"

"_Those_," said Sokka, and pointed. Because this gesture was lost on Toph, he clarified, "Those _things_. Attached to your chest."

For a moment, Toph looked at him like he was crazy—or rather, she aimed her face in his direction and contorted her features into an incredulous grimace the likes of which channeled Azula. "What?" she ventured. She patted a hand over her torso, its knuckles knocking Sokka's breastbone too. "These? My boobs?"

"_Boooooobs_," Sokka understood. "You got some." He finished up with a lame and utterly unplanned, "Yeah, those. Awesome."

"…uh-huh," came the dubious agreement. Toph dug a finger into her ear and explored its canal. For conversation's sake she supplied, "They came in over the last year or so, I guess."

Sokka marveled privately at the scientific processes behind such growth and wondered aloud, hand tight over his teacup, "How're they, uh, working for you?"

"Pretty okay. They're, you know. Bouncy." The Earthbender paused—smirked. "How about you?"

Sweat broke out on Sokka's brow, tiny pinprick beads of it. She wanted _his _opinion? Spirits. "Nice," permitted the tribesman. His eyes crawled over his best friend's newfound chest; his fingers gave an involuntary clench. A small crack spidered into life under them nearby his teacup's handle. He revisited, "Yeah, they're nice. Really nice. Pert! …mango. Uhm. Mango-apple-sized."

Toph blinked again. A sound rose in her throat: a giggle, almost. Sliding closer to Sokka such that her most recent additions brushed along his arm, she corrected, "Thanks, but I was asking whether _you've _changed at all. Got any new add-ons?" She rocked on the balls of her feet; her torso jiggled in ways Sokka had never imagined it could. She went on, "I'd love to comment about your various physical adjustments, but…" She fluttered the lashes of her sightless eyes at him.

"No, no, my bad," he assured her, red-cheeked. "I haven't changed that much, actually. I'm still supple. SOKKA. I mean, _Spirits_, uhm. _Sokka_. I'm still Sokka, ahaha! Normal plain old boring Sokka!"

"Has your voice always been that womanlike?" Toph teased. "It's gotten nice and squeaky there, Snoozles."

"My voice is the _epitome of manliness_," Sokka growled.

Despite that she clearly thought otherwise, Toph determined not to dignify Sokka's claim with a response. Plucking from a wandering server's tray a cup of steaming tea, she sniffed it, took a sip, sighed, and leaned peaceably into the tribesman's side. He curled an arm around her shoulders, gave them a squeeze. For a few heartbeats there in the midst of the milling crowd, the Earthbender and the tribesman were contentedly quiet.

"Would your epitome of manliness like to become acquainted with my supple, mango-apple-sized boobs?" abruptly wondered Toph. The moment's serenity shattered like a kicked mirror, along with it Sokka's harassed teacup.

"OW! _No_," the warrior denied, shaking his fingers to rid them of shards and scalding liquid. "Geez, why would you think that?"

"Oh, I dunno." Toph shrugged. "It's just that, see, they're the only thing you've talked about since you walked in here, and I thought I might as well"—her mouth creased wickedly as she gooshed her assets into his ribs—"come right out and ask."

Sokka's stomach fluttered. The sensation wasn't altogether unpleasant. "Toph," he managed, strangled, "cut me some slack, okay? You just rearranged, like, the whole cosmos by proving you're a _girl_." Sucking a breath, he wheezed, "Don't flirt. _Please_. You will break my poor little brain."

"Pretty sure it's already broken," said Toph, and she reached up to curl her arms around his neck. Warning bells clanged in Sokka's head—Toph was _never _this affectionate. Before he could begin to formulate a defensive maneuver, though, his best friend exercised a fraction of her formidable strength and dragged Sokka's face straight down into her equally formidable cleavage.

Cushioned thus, Sokka barely registered the pain of his kneecaps hitting the floor a few seconds later.

"Awesome!" exulted Toph. She jounced her pillowy talents smugly—Sokka nearly suffocated. "Yet another weapon with which to bring men to their _knees_." Glancing about the room, she mused aloud, "Wonder if it works on guys who're already married? Hey, ZUKO—"

Toph departed, eager to experiment. Left alone to sway in his puddle of spilled tea, Sokka hazily informed no one in particular, "Wow."


	18. Vision

**Commentary: **Set post-series. There are some vaguely mature implications here, but nothing to get in a snit over, I don't think.

**Words: **1,715

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**Word TWENTY-FOUR: Vision**

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A single shadow slid away from the others nearby the door. Crossing the hut on tremulous feet, it hesitated—stretched out a piece of itself, questing. When it found Katara's fingers, it twisted in them and became a hand, and that hand an arm, and that arm an Earthbender huddling in the dark. She sank to her knees at Katara's bedside, quieter than quiet, and waited. When some small slip in the silence made its suggestion, she blew out three words:

"Sweetness, wake up."

Katara didn't.

Gnawing her lip in frustration, the Earthbender—one Toph Bei Fong—arched onto her tiptoes and strained her ears. Beyond Katara's prone form there was another: she could hear him breathing, his respiration soft and slow in slumber. She wanted it to _stay _that way. Rocking back on her heels and cursing the furs that lined the hut's hard floor, Toph tightened her grip on Katara's hand. She tugged it, just a little.

"Sweetness," she said again, insistent. "_Katara_, wake up!"

Katara's next inhale stuttered, _ah-uh-huh_, and against Toph's palm her thumb made a circle. "Muh?" she ventured muzzily. "Wha—"

Lurching forward onto her toes a second time, Toph ran a hand up the Waterbender's arm to her shoulder, giving the round of flesh a hurried squeeze. The nightgown covering it rustled. Katara's breathing snapped into quiet—her eyes flew open and she squinted into the hut's gloom at Toph's hovering silhouette, spine taut, neck prickling. At her back Aang shifted, exhaled. He drifted into stillness again and the blob that was Toph's head jerked.

"C'mon," she said. The furs stretched over the doorway swung as she crept back through them, admitting into the hut a knife of moonlight and whisper of cold air.

Katara sighed. Drawing tight about herself a hastily scavenged blanket, she thrust her feet into her moccasins, tucked the bedclothes tight about the sleeping Aang, and followed Toph out into the night.

The world was all glitter and gleam, a silver expanse of shining brilliance that made Katara shudder appreciatively. _Home_, the vista sang, and a spray of snow on the wind drove her down the dark dotted line of footprints toward the next hut some twenty paces distant. Toph, storming ahead, was already almost there, groping out with hesitating hands for the shelter. She stumbled, cursed, found that hut's doorflap. She disappeared within. A few seconds later Katara joined her inside. Shaking free the errant snowflakes from her hair before they could melt in it, she moved to light the lamps Toph had never needed to touch herself.

Their faint glow threw a sooty orange blanket over the Earthbender, who was now seated in the middle of the hut's vast collection of furs—Toph got cold easily so far south—rubbing her feet grimly. The pads of those feet were red, raw, wet. Wiping them against a handy skin, the smaller girl wiggled her toes and grunted, "I don't care what anyone says. This place? It sucks. _Sucks_, Sweetness."

"It's not for everyone," Katara allowed diplomatically. She folded herself down next to Toph and glanced over at the other Bender's bedroll. It looked untouched. Raising a brow, she asked, "You haven't slept tonight, have you?"

"Kind of hard to sleep when you're freezing to death," came the mutter. Toph pressed a thumb to the center of her stone-hard sole, wincing. "No," she rejoined. "I haven't. As it happens, I've got a lot on my mind."

"I kind of thought so, what with you waking me up in the middle of the night and all."

Toph scowled. "Hey, it's not my fault you spend every waking moment with Twinkles, okay? I tried to get your attention earlier, but you were too busy sucking his face off to—"

"We hadn't seen each other in a while!" Katara interjected, snapped from drowsiness.

"Yeah, well," retorted the Earthbender, "I haven't _ever _seen you."

Katara buried her face in her hands. Sighing through the sharp slats her fingers made, she managed, "…_fine_. What is it, Toph? What's"—and the Waterbender lifted her head again, squinting at the small huddle of her friend in the flickering lamplight—"keeping you awake?"

Toph shifted. She tucked her feet into the slippers she'd been provided upon her arrival the previous morning, the motion a mix of reluctant and relieved. The toes of the slippers contracted. Tipping her head back to feign studying the hut's stippled, curved ceiling, she answered, "Actually, it's kind of what I just said."

_Kkkck_! The wick in the lamp nearest Katara snickered, and its guttered flame sent shadows leaping and lunging over the walls. "What?" pursued the tribeswoman.

"I haven't ever _seen _you," Toph repeated. She opened her mouth again, maybe to add something else—there was a whisper of sound in her throat, a faint grate, and then nothing. With a frown, the smaller girl turned her face away. In the lamplight her eyes were orange hedging toward red.

Katara wasn't sure how to respond. Gathering her legs closer to her body to absently rub warmth back into her chilled thighs—her nightdress only stretched so low—she considered, staring at the Bender across from her both because Toph didn't _know _she was staring and because there were only so many things in the hut to look at anyway. She chewed her lip. Finally she ventured, ginger, "Why's this bothering you now, Toph? Or"—and it wounded Katara to ask, to even _think_ Toph had borne an injury so long without notice—"has it always?"

Toph heard the hitch in Katara's voice and shot a wolfish grin her friend's way. "Easy there, Fussy Britches," she soothed. "I haven't been pining for pictures of you all since we met or anything. I can't see you, but I do _know _you." Toph's grin waned to a smile. Lifting a hand, she walked two fingers midair and murmured, "Your footsteps, your heartbeats, your breathing, your voices, your laughter—they shape you, in here." She pivoted the fingers aright to tap them against her temple. "But," she began, and stopped. Her pale throat bobbed.

The lamp's wick snickered again, hoarse in the quiet.

"But?" coaxed Katara.

Dropping her hands to worry them through the furs, Toph slouched and growled, "But you—you and Sokka and Aang, and—and even Zuko, tight-assed as he is… none of you are earth or rock or metal." The Earthbender shrugged. "I've _touched _those things, Katara. I've felt them and held them and pressed them in my hands." She held up those appendages demonstratively, their nailbeds still black with the dirt Toph had left behind days ago in the Earth Kingdom. "I can pick up a stone and know its flaws, its creases—I can toe a path and understand where it turns and how long it is. But I can't see your faces because I haven't really touched them, so—yeah," finished Toph lamely. Katara then noticed Toph's hands were still up, the palms shining and hard-looking, the fingers crooked at the tips.

"So… what?" the Waterbender pursued, trying her best not to smile. Toph couldn't see faces, no, but she had an uncanny way of knowing when others were amused at her expense, and her fists left bruises that didn't fade for weeks.

"So let me touch your freaking face, okay?" Toph demanded, and before Katara could say yes or no there were rough nails scraping down her cheeks, intent and hungry, the pads of the fingers beneath them both coarse and careful.

Katara wisely kept still. Toph, her mouth pursed, scooted closer and pressed her palms flat to the taller girl's cheeks: she pinched them, chuckling when they compressed. "Hey," protested her friend, "those are tender!" but Toph ignored her, tugging fast at the round of flesh just beneath Katara's eye.

"You have chubby cheeks," she whispered. "They're really soft." Thumb encountering the dimple in one of those cheeks, Toph explored it, then lifted her touch hesitantly higher, the pad of her index finger tracing Katara's eye, her lashes, her brow. "Soft," she said again. Her hand caught Katara's nose.

Inhaling between the Earthbender's fingers, Katara reflected that even here, surrounded by snow and ice and the whole world's winter chill, Toph smelled like a summer garden.

"Honk," Toph insisted, and tweaked Katara's nosetip before running her fingers down this time. She pawed at the other girl's chin—went up the Waterbender's jaw to her ear, back over her forehead, descended again. With all the caution of a butterwasp over a roseblossom, she touched Katara's lips, mapped their contours: pressed her thumb to their corner and let it linger at the crease. She caressed the spot once, twice—a third time too, slowly, as though to memorize the feel and fall of the skin there.

Pulling away abruptly, Toph finished, "Thanks, Katara," and turned to crawl into her bedroll. Grunting and rooting at the furs, Toph was soon covered. She sighed, shrugged—fell still.

A moment passed and Katara reluctantly rose too, brushing her nightdress down again. "Sure," she agreed, watching Toph's little pale hands work and flex over the edges of her bedclothes. "Yeah, no problem."

"The lights," said the girl airily. She rolled onto her side, showing the tribeswoman the back of her head. One hand unfastened itself from its clench in the furs and rose to wave at Katara in a shoo-shoo motion. "Don't forget to snuff them on your way out."

Miffed but unwilling to start an interrogation so late, Katara went to the lamps. She extinguished them, first one and the next after, and she was at the door and halfway through it when Toph's voice came questing from the darkness of the hut: "Hey, Katara?"

The Waterbender turned. She peered into the shelter's interior, her eyes squinched up. Her cheek throbbed where Toph had grabbed it. At first the shadows gave up nothing—but a single thread of moonlight, like a reprimand, slid over Katara's shoulder and into the hut a heartbeat later. It slanted its spool over Toph's face—the Earthbender had turned back toward the bedroll's fore—and illuminated a visage that was desperately curious, caught in a grimace, and flushed creeper-vine pink.

"Do you—do you look anything like your brother?" asked Toph.


	19. Beginning

**Commentary: **Here's #25! A quarter of the way through! Let's see how far I can get. =) This one is set mid-series.

**Words: **3,240

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**Word TWENTY-FIVE: Beginning**

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On this day they are all sleeping but her, even Appa, and the spring's unseasonable heat pushes its oppressive bowl down over them. Toph walks between their slumbering, sweating forms, irritated and bored, her expression nevertheless fond because these people are her world now and Katara's making weird little whistling noises with her nose, _snee-snee, snee-snee_. Hunkering down next to the drowsing Waterbender, Toph carefully extends her hand and rests her opportune thumb against the other girl's plump nub of a snout. She pushes—just a teensy bit.

_Sneeeeeeeeee_!

"Maestro," Toph compliments Katara gravely, and leaves her to dream.

She stops next at Aang's girly ballerina hip, rocking to and fro on the balls of her feet. He's like a jumble of sticks spilled across the thicket's loam floor, so light and thin throughout. He reminds her of the birds' nest she found in the gardens once back home, and she remembers just how easily that small thing broke apart under her fingers, the brittle bone-snapping sounds it made. With a twitch he rolls across his pallet, groaning out something about sea prunes, and Toph's toe touches his elbow. She smirks at his frailty—his arm's an apple branch, his fingers scuttering twigs. She sighs and her stomach clenches, _burns_, roiling both with protective juices and the lunch she ate not long ago.

This tiny little guy is supposed to save the world? Seriously?

"You're lucky you've got me around now, kid," she tells him. She gives his encroaching elbow a nudge. "I'll look out for you. …well. Sorta."

"Momo," Aang moans faintly, "eat one, _please_."

Toph shrugs, hooks her arms behind her head, and wanders to the final member of their fantastic foursome.

Disappointing. That's what he is, this guy—he's not making any interesting noises or wiggling around at all. Toph, who was hoping for some entertainment, just shakes her head and scrubs her foot in the dirt next to him. A flickering picture of the sleeping youth paints itself in her mind. He's tall, more than Aang and Katara, all slender gangly limbs stuck to a thin, wedge-shaped torso in which his heart throbs like a foreign drum, _tippa-tippa-tmm_. His chin is very pointy and his shoulders flare out under it, both of them almost too big for him. Having upended small bushes more impressive than this mouseshrew of a man, Toph can say nothing significant about his physical qualities.

He exhales in a deep, gusting breath. Toph pauses; her foot falls still. As subpar and wimpy as he feels to her now, she reckons that there has to be _something _special about Sokka, something lurking beneath his admittedly mediocre surface, or he wouldn't be traveling with the Avatar. In that she feels a quiet kinship with him, because Toph's own outward appearance convinced her parents to keep her locked away behind high, safe walls her entire life, and it continues to convince most passersby of her apparent vulnerability. A helpless little weak blind girl—that's what she looks like to people.

The greatest Earthbender in the world, though—that's who she _is_.

Who is Sokka, really, underneath all that… whatever it is he's made of? Toph scowls at nothing and wonders.

Apparently she wonders too hard and too long, because suddenly there's a finger jabbing her knee and Sokka, who managed to wake up without her notice, demands of her in a groggy croak, "Toph? 'Sit? 'Swrong?" His arms pinwheel drunkenly. "Firebenders?" He lurches forward; nearby, Katara provides a restless stir.

Toph plants her foot in Sokka's chest and forces him back onto his bedroll. His arms hit the ground on either side of it—_whap_!—and the ensuing vibrations tell Toph that he's looking up at her curiously, his fingers hooked into half-wary claws, his mouth pursed. Every time he blinks she feels a flutter under her toes, and his heart hammers against her heel with all the fervency of a thunderstorm.

"Shut up," she scolds him. "You'll wake everyone else! There's nothing wrong."

Instantly his pulse quiets and he relaxes, and his implicit trust of her words twists Toph's stomach more than Aang's smallness did earlier. "Oh," the tribesman observes, his voice much lower now. Wiggling out from beneath her foot, he sits up again, rubs at his face. She hears the rasp of stubble under his fingertips. "Why were you watching me sleep, then?" he asks. He tacks on next, "That's creepy, you know."

A surge of heat flares up Toph's neck and splotches over her jaw. Her cheeks smolder. There's abruptly too much spit in her mouth and the pound of blood in her temples is almost deafening. "Watching you sleep?" she whisper-snarls. "I wasn't watching you sleep!"

She was definitely watching him sleep.

Luckily for Toph, Sokka misinterprets her rampant blush and furious denial as signs of anger. He convulses in a wince, hisses, "Oh geez, yeah—right. Sorry. _Watching_. You can't exactly—what I mean is your eyes are—" His heartbeat trebles. _Skrch-skrch-skrch_: his nails rake down the back of his head. "…my bad," he finishes lamely.

Toph's blush deepens, this time in something like shame. She wants to correct Sokka, to tell him she can see him just fine—but that would mean admitting she _was_ checking him out during naptime like some weird stalker-person and—and she doesn't need to go around giving Sokka the wrong _idea_, that's all. Turning slightly away from him, she decides to let him believe he's insulted her. However unfair, it's safer that way.

"You bet," she growls. "Make sure it doesn't happen again, Snoozles."

He mumbles agreement. Blowing her breath out in a sigh—partly relief, partly self-rebuke—Toph trots toward anything but him. She's made it about five steps before Sokka starts scrabbling around behind her, calling out in a hoarse murmur, "Hey, actually! Could you, ack! Wait just a sec?" There comes the sound of cloth rubbing cloth, and then the odd but unmistakable crackle of paper.

Toph slows to a reluctant but inquisitive halt. Less than ten seconds finds Sokka struggling to his feet with some objects in tow: a scroll, a little pouch, a brush. He lopes over to her, juggling those items. Thrusting them into his elbow, he seizes her hand. "Let's talk over here," he suggests hurriedly, and then he's nigh dragging her away from the others, his respiration ragged in his excitement.

Toph only allows herself to be hauled along for two reasons: she wants to know why Sokka feels the need to speak to her alone, and his hand is unexpectedly hard and heavy against hers. Smooth, yes, and slender—but firm too. His fingers are somehow… rocklike in the way they shift, in the way they clench.

She can respect that.

Once the tribesman has situated them between a large tree and some bushes, he pulls her down into a secretive crouch and releases her. He leans in, his forehead almost touching hers. He smells of recently roasted meat and sweat and summertime, and Toph grins despite herself. As he fumbles his trinkets between them, she drops her elbows onto her thighs, claps her hands together, and asks, "So, what's this about?"

He laughs. It's a high, jittery, nervous sound, not at all masculine, and he seems to realize this because he clamps his jaws shut before he can really get going. "Uh"—the scroll falls from his grasp, rolls between her feet—"I was just wondering if maybe, you know…"

Reaching for the scroll, Toph picks it up and fingers her way along its tattered edges. She sniffs it too, gingerly; it fills her nostrils with the scents of dust, shelves. It's nothing special, not to her—then again, she's not the Earth Kingdom's best scholar for obvious reasons. "I _don't_ know, actually," she reminds him, passing the scroll back. "I think you dragged me over here to tell me. Didn't you?"

"Yeah… I, ahaha, I wanted to know if—" Whatever he wanted to know ends in a desperate squeak.

"Spit it out"—she provides him this gentle encouragement—"or I'm going over there." Lifting her arm, she waves vaguely off to the right somewhere. She actually has no interest whatsoever in venturing away, of course. In fact, she's so curious she's practically vibrating in place because no one's ever really wanted to _talk _to her before. Flattering as his interest is, though, she feels like a threat will motivate Sokka. As it turns out, she's right.

"I wanted to know"—he sucks in a great breath, shivers, and rushes on—"?"

Toph blinks. Lifting a hand, she wiggles a finger at Sokka, asks him, "Hang on a sec, 'kay?" and proceeds to dig that finger into each of her ears. Only after she has excavated both canals and flicked away the waxy detritus does she determine, "That's better. Sorry—what was that again, Snoozles? I don't think I heard you right the first time."

"Autograph," Sokka whimpers. "Could I—could I get your autograph?"

Toph blinks again. Her hearing seems to be perfect, and Katara's next _snee-snee _cements this by echoing in the Earthbender's perception like a ripple of weird squeaky thunder. She swallows. That is painfully loud too, _unkggrrkkk_, and she chokes and coughs and suddenly she's laughing like Sokka laughed, the sound high and jittery and nervous, and she can hear the tribesman's palms rasping and creaking as he clenches them over the scroll and all the blood in her body is rushing, rushing, rushing to her face—

For the first time in her life and despite the evidence to the contrary, Toph doubts the capabilities of her ears.

Her laughter cuts off like the dregs of water tipped from an empty cup and the words, "You want my _what_?" spill out in its place, a hoarse grate. Sokka flinches back. Toph doesn't try to follow him and sits with her head cocked, her arms thrust out in an unconscious and rather mantis-like display of surprise. She repeats, incredulous, "You want my what?" And finally, "My… my _autograph_?"

Toph is blind and has been so her entire life. While both the fair brain buzzing behind her skull's thick wall and her prodigious Earthbending talent leave her lacking in little but tact, her congenital sight disability has rendered weak her concepts of certain practices. Writing is one of those practices. She has never seen written words as she sees the majority of her world. As all things to her they are sound first, soft _skitta-skit _noises made by a pen's metal nib or a quill's cut crook. Unfortunately they are also _only _sound, fluid and flat and undetectable to her feet. She knows what written words are because people have _told _her what they are, but she does not understand them: like she does not understand colors, or pictures, or sunrises, or a thousand-thousand other things her peers pity her missing.

Silence stretches its deafening web between the girl and the youth for a moment, its spell broken shortly by Katara's next round of nose-whistling.

_SNEE-snee-snee! SNEE-snee-snee!_

"Aah… I guess that's a no?" asks Sokka at last. He sounds so sincerely miserable, so outright dejected, that Toph feels a pang of pity for ignoring him in the sea of her own discomfiture. She lifts her hands and holds them up, palms out.

"Did I _say _no?" she shoots back.

In less than a second his pulse throbs into a full-blown concerto. "So you'll do it?"

"Hold on there, Meathead. I didn't say _that _either." But then she stops, hesitating, and provides next, "Why do you want my autograph? Tell me that first."

"You _rock_," supplies Sokka, tone bordering on worship. Toph's signature smirk stretches over her face approvingly. "I mean, you defeated the Boulder! And the Big Bad Hippo! And—and all those other dudes all at once and you _didn't even have to try_, and you were so"—he thuds forward onto his knees and she knows he's clutching the air in his fervency, his fingers trembling, his chin aquiver—"_awesome_."

Toph, preening inwardly, nevertheless dismisses Sokka's reverence in a flutter of fingertips. "I know I'm awesome," she contends, "and I'm glad you've come to accept that pillar of pure universal truth, but you still haven't told me why you want my name on a sheet of paper." Because she can feel the genuine puzzlement radiating off him in waves, she decides to lower her walls a little. Digging her toes into the loose, dry soil, Toph reminds Sokka as she waves a hand in front of her face, "Blind girl here. Humor me, huh? Why would you want _anyone's _name on a sheet of paper?"

"Oh!" _Skrrrch _as Sokka draws his leg from beneath his body, scattering pebbles. Crossing that leg over the other, he clutches his hands about his ankles and makes a sound like, "Hnnn." He taps his finger against his chin. While some might consider all the fidgeting a distraction, Toph appreciates a companion so full of noise. "Well," he says, and then his finger is poking at her knee again, "an autograph's not _just _a name, Toph. I mean, uh, it _is _just a name if you look at it—err, if you _think _about it that way."

"Nice save."

"I try. But"—and he gives her a particularly firm jab—"it's more like, huh… a little _piece _of someone, I guess. Yeah." Confidence builds in Sokka's voice and he goes on, warming to the idea, "That's what an autograph is. A tiny little _piece_ of someone you can carry around. That you can keep with you all the time."

The implication that Sokka would like to keep a piece of her with him lends Toph's heartbeat an unexpected stutter. She voices gingerly, "And why would anyone want that?" _Why would __**you **__want a little piece of __**me **__in your pocket, Meathead?_

"It's special." Sokka doesn't miss a beat, though he does appear to be oblivious to the renewed blaze creeping over Toph's cheeks. She finds space in her embarrassment to be grateful—ironically—for such blindness. "It's a treasure. It's something you can show others, too—proof that says, 'Hey, I met the world's greatest Earthbender and she stopped long enough to rub off a little something on me.'"

"Rub?" Toph almost gags on the word. "You want to tell people I've been _rubbing _something on you?"

Sokka smirks. She can feel it, a queer kind of heat at her expense, and she curls her lip and sneers back at him, silent, doglike. Soon his expression softens, though, and he explains, "Yeah, sorta. You giving me your autograph is pretty much the equivalent of you taking the time to rub off a little of your awesomeness on me. Like… like you giving me an amulet or a charm or something. For luck!"

He stops, gathering himself. Toph waits. Finally Sokka finishes, "And it couldn't hurt for a guy like me, you know—what was it you called me this morning?"

"A Boomerangbender," the Earthbender supplies helpfully.

Toph can't see it, but Sokka's brow twitches. "Right. Me, Boomerangbender Extraordinaire… it couldn't hurt for me to have something like that. Especially if it's coming from you. You know… a Toph talisman."

Beneath Toph's feet the ground is dry and powdery, and in the noontime heat she can almost feel it cracking, every grain of sand parched, every particle of soil saturated by the warmth of an early season's relentless sun. She rocks back on her heels, her head down; a few hanks of her sweaty hair escape her band and fall down over her forehead. She doesn't mind, though. She's listening, and thinking, and trying very hard to both reconcile and understand the sudden hot balm spreading through her chest that has nothing to do with the approaching summer. She is _especially_ wondering if Sokka put it there—and if he did put it there, _how _he managed the feat.

See, Toph has never been charmed before.

_Maybe he's rubbing something off on me too_, she muses. She isn't sure whether she likes that idea or not.

Aloud she provides, "Fine, fine, you can have your talisman. Sheesh." She shrugs, rolling her shoulders. The bones give an effusive grind and she mutters, "You need all the help you can get."

"_Exactly_," Sokka agrees shamelessly. He beams at Toph, his hands on his knees, his face fit to split open, and for a moment she smiles too, staring off and away into space somewhere over his right ear.

But then she says, "Well? Are you waiting for something?" and he scrabbles to get the materials ready. Paper rustles. _Tikka-tikka-tik _as other things rattle together, and then he's thrusting a brush into her hand, his fingers pressing hers down in a curl over the instrument's smooth handle. A cool glass cylinder brushes her knee: that's the inkwell. Sokka puts it well within reach. _Ptoip! _He uncorks it. The studious, acrid scent of ink wafts up to Toph in the heat. She wrinkles her nose. She dips the business end of the brush into it, swirls it around, lifts it. Leans forward over the scroll spread out on the ground between them.

_Pttap. Pttap. Pttap. _The brush drips, crafting dark starbursts on the corner of that scroll. Tongue between her teeth, Toph considers. Years ago—a _lifetime _ago—she sat in her father's study on his knees and he pressed a brush into her fingers, a brush much like the one she holds now. Over and over again he guided her hand and the tool it held across paper after paper, trying desperately to teach her the intricacies of her name. She remembers the smell of him, cinnamon cloves—his breath on her neck and the tickle of his face-whiskers. She remembers the line of his desk against her stomach, stalwart and sturdy—she remembers the frenzy of his heartbeat in her shoulder. She remembers ruining the symbols, smearing them, smudging them, dragging her sleeves in them, and she remembers finally the slump of her father's pulse and the moan he muffled into the cradle of his hands:

"_My daughter will never know her own name."_

Toph lunges. The brush hits the surface of the scroll—ink squirts up in a jet, sideways in a fan. Jerking the bristles across the paper, Toph writes what she _does _know, what she has _always _known, and when she is finished she drops the brush into the inkwell and leans away again, silent. Sokka scoots closer to survey her handiwork.

_TOPH_, the signature reads. No more, no less.

In an instant the ink is dry, cemented to the scroll forever. With reverent hands Sokka picks it up. He holds it to the light, studying it. The symbols are crooked in the way mountains are crooked: the radicals jounce and jostle together like boulders, like stones. He looks sidelong at the Earthbender to whom the marks belong and she rubs her hand over her jaw, smearing ink down the corner of her mouth like a dagger.

"You," Sokka whispers, "are _awesome_, Toph."

He's her friend, Toph realizes. That's who Sokka is—her friend.

But she is still the greatest Earthbender in the world, and so she tells him, "You said that already, Snoozles. C'mon, grow some originality," and turns her face away to hide the smile he has put there.


	20. ABC

**Commentary: **Could happen mid-series or shortly post-series. If Katara can Bend blood, Toph can Bend bone. Right? Also, as great an Earthbender as she is when the Gaang meets her, I've always assumed Toph took some hits to get to her level of mastery. Hence this snippet. Hope you enjoy it!

**Words: **500

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_**A **_**is for **_**ankle**_**.**

The first time Sokka sees Toph dance, it is almost three o'clock in the morning and neither of them mean it—Toph to perform or Sokka to witness it. They are both simply converging on the same place at the same time, drawn from their beds by restless minds and twitching legs. Sokka rounds the corner of the inn's winding porch and spots Toph coming down its opposite end, her fingers trailing along the wall—the floor is all wooden planking; she cannot see. Shoulders hunched against the chill, she's moving quickly, half shuffle, half scurry. In the air her breath makes cloud after steaming cloud. Sokka has opened his mouth to call a soft hello when her foot catches a slick spot, probably ice. Her left leg sweeps out from beneath her—her knee jerks, cants sideways. _SKKCHHH _as her nails scrape down the wall. Wrenched thus, Toph shows grace for time's briefest flicker. She pivots on her right ankle: overhead her arms arc, the fingers of both hands nigh touching. Her thumbs meet in a triangle. Her mouth forms a perfect O. The haze of her exhale in the moonlight is silver, silver.

But cruel momentum hooks her sharply around. Her ankle folds. It—

_**B **_**is for **_**bone**_**.**

—makes a terrible snapping sound and she falls, _whumph_, and sprawls there on the porch on her side, a heap of limbs and curses. Rushing to her down the porch, Sokka skids himself, slides past her. He comes skittering back on hands and knees. By the time he reaches his friend, Toph has already pulled herself up and is clutching at her wounded appendage, her respiration rapid, her teeth clenched. She utters an expletive that Sokka can only echo. For a moment they grapple, Sokka's fingers prying at Toph's, her elbow a stubborn knife in his chest.

"Let me see," he demands. Cold sweat makes his hands clumsy. He touches the taut flesh of the Earthbender's joint, pushes it down too hard. She yelps. She shoves him. Her thumbnail digs a furrow across his cheek.

"_Asshole_," she seethes. She glares in his direction. Huffing out a tiny gasp of pain, she folds her hands over her ankle, twists it. Sokka has time to note that her foot is pointed distinctly the _wrong _direction before it—

_**C **_**is for **_**crunch**_**.**

—crackles forward again under Toph's clenched fingers. The swollen joint ripples, smoothes. With a faint grunt the Earthbender rocks upright. She bounces on her good foot: slowly lowers the other to the porch. She gingerly puts her weight on it, winces, and leans down to clasp it a second time. There is another horrific _ker-cccchk _and then, walking normally, Toph shoves her way past the gaping Sokka into the latrine.

"I was here first," she insists.

"How did you—but," Sokka fumbles, "it was _broken_…"

Shrugging, she replies, "It's happened before. Lots of times." She adds, "Don't be a pansy," and slams the door in his face.


	21. Victor

**Commentary: **=)

**Words: **1,050

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**Word TWENTY-NINE: Victor**

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"I am going to hit you."

The words come out before he can really think about them, a spurting declaration. They surprise him. He isn't the only one: on the trail a few yards ahead, Aang and Katara turn as one to goggle at Sokka and his companion. That companion, Toph Bei Fong, stops dead in her tracks. She cocks her head toward the person who has issued the challenge.

"I am going to hit you," Sokka says again, more firmly this go-round. His voice is cheery. Pleasant. It fits in perfectly with their serene surroundings, a forest wherein the birds provide afternoon melodies and the canopy sighs and shifts overhead, responding to the rumors in the breeze's whispering gossip. For the second occasion in some odd seconds Sokka is surprised, and this time it's because he realizes he means what he's said.

"Are you really?" asks Toph. She widens her eyes, peering at him in artificial innocence. Pooching out her lower lip, she wiggles her nonexistent hips and extends one hand into the space between them. The tips of two fingers waggle demonstratively. "Bring it, Boomerang Boy."

"I." Sokka looks at Toph. All day she's been teasing him, niggling him about his wolftail, his weapons, his status as a warrior, his Water Tribe culture, his _everything_, and he's had enough. "Am going." He's absolutely sick of it. She's a spoiled little brat, the Earthbender, and while she might be all kinds of awesome with rocks and dirt and stuff, she's got no right to try to bully him into the ground. "To hit you." Since she apparently never learned them at home, someone's got to teach her some manners.

"Heard you the first time and the second time too." Up come her fists. She jabs them playfully at him—one only just ghosts over his arm, _bap_. "Bring it," she repeats. On her face her mouth has curled into a small, indulgent smile.

"Sokka," Katara protests, her voice hinging on horrified. Toph's just a little girl. Twelve years old. Blind. Over the Earthbender's head his sister's eyes pin him, saying all these things and more. Her gaze is damning, incredulous. Is he really going to strike a child? Her plaintive silence begs for the answer to that question to be _of course not_.

"Hey guys," Aang interjects, stepping back along the trail toward his friends, "c'mon, this isn't necessary—"

"No-ho-_ho_! Back up, Twinkles. Butt out." Toph reaches aside. She plants a hand firmly in the center of Aang's thin chest and shoves him backward. The bald boy knocks into Katara, who steadies him with fingers clasped in surety about his flailing arms. "If Snoozles here wants a rumble, he _gets a _rumble," Toph insists. Twin puffs of dust erupt from the trail as she slides her feet into their familiar martial stance. Her elbows bob. Her hands open and close, open and close; her eyes glint like pewter coins in her face and she says gleefully, "Just you and me, buddy. Let's go."

"I am going to hit you," Sokka reminds her, patient. He engages in none of the posturing that comes before a duel. He does not reach for his boomerang or grope for his club. He does not pop his knuckles—Toph performs this ritual effusively enough for ten people, tendering each digit one by one, a grinding xylophone—or thumb his nose or call out insults. Instead he flicks open the clasp of his bag. Amongst the noise of the woods and the shuffle of the three other people nearby, the soft click of the buckle goes unnoticed.

"Listen, this is stupid." That's Aang, making a last-ditch effort to prevent a fight between his friends. He's the Avatar. Peacemaking: it's what he does.

Unfortunately, Aang is also twelve years old and he still kind of sucks at it. "The only thing that's stupid is not making the first move," sneers Toph. She lunges, lifting one foot. When that foot comes down again, Sokka knows, the ground will probably rise up like a wave and smack him straight in his very vulnerable nuts.

Plunging a hand into his bag, Sokka searches for something special, finds it, and pulls it free. He went hunting this morning, see: he stalked among the trees of this forest like the accomplished hunter he is, and his efforts were ultimately successful. He boomeranged a large boarcupine. He skinned it, gutted it, took it to Katara. She cooked it, and what they didn't eat at breakfast they will split for dinner (with the exception of Aang, who has been sustaining himself on groundnuts since they entered the woods two days ago).

Sokka hails from a tribe that uses all parts of any kill, and this one is no exception. The boarcupine's teeth are excellent weights for his fishing line; its quills he will make into pens, its claws into a bracelet he'll trade in the next village for something more useful.

Its bladder, tied off carefully with twine and still full of piss, was _going _to make an unpleasant surprise for the next Firebender foolish enough to cross his path.

Plans change.

Sokka cocks his arm back, gauges the distance: fires. If there's anything he has on Toph it's aim, and the fist-sized bladder hits her square in the face.

It bursts. Lukewarm boarcupine urine sprays down Toph's cheeks, over her brow, and into her leering mouth. At best it smells worse than a fresh steaming pile of bisonshit layered in moldy fishguts, and the Earthbender has a sensitive nose. She shrieks, stumbles, spits, gags, heaves, falls to her knees, claws at her face. Heaves again. Dropping onto her elbows on the path, she vomits into the dirt just in front of Sokka's shoes.

A few moments pass as she catches her breath. When Katara tries to step forward to help her, though, Toph shakes her head and croaks, "No." She rises of her own volition. She dusts off her tunic. She wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve, turns her face toward Sokka, and studies him—or pretends to study him. Disgusting juices drip from her chin. They patter across the earth below, _spack-spack-spack_.

Finally she tips her head in the smallest suggestion of deference and acknowledges, "You win."


	22. Zinc

**Commentary: **Thirty one-sentences to celebrate, well, hitting #30! I've always wanted to do a few of these, so here you go. =) They aren't in any particular order, and I'm not counting each of them as a separate one-shot either.

Also, for those wondering about the title of this snippet, 30 is zinc's atomic number.

**Words: **1,140

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**Word THIRTY: Zinc**

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**Repair**

She doesn't make a sound as they stitch up the gash in her leg, while Sokka's similar injury and its treatment provoke a yelping keen fit to wake the dead—still, they leave the medical tent together, and they are laughing when they go.

**Legacy**

Her parents never write her back, the doors of their estate forever shut: years later when his son shoots flame from his fingers, Sokka remembers Toph's face in the shadow of her family's gate, beams, and assures the uncertain young Firebender, "No matter what, I'll always be proud of you."

**Pursuit**

When they meet again after ten months apart, he drops a thimble-sized stone into her hand and says, "I took this everywhere I went, but it wasn't the same as having you with me… except it did poke me in the butt when I was trying to sleep."

**Tomb**

Hearing the news, he takes the first ferry he can to go see her—upon arrival and despite that she has become what she loved best, nothing can prevent Sokka's world from crumbling at the sight of that little gray stone.

**Dare**

The cave spider is bigger than her head and has fangs longer than her thumb, but she nevertheless crams it into her mouth and demands, its hairy bristling legs flexing feebly over her lips, "'Ay up, 'Oozleth."

**Grief**

He's seen her cry before, sure, but when they find the dead badgermole blocking the tunnel between Omashu and the desert, Sokka sees Toph _sob_ and realizes the difference.

**Mull**

"I wonder if you dream in color," he murmurs one day, and as much as Toph would like to provide a sharp retort, she can't help but ponder too.

**Recur**

He fell in love once with a girl who turned into the moon, and he fell in love again with a… well, with Toph, who holds the moon in her eyes.

**Squeamish**

Toph is afraid of the roachbeetles that just so _happened_ to wander into her earth tent, Sokka discovers, but she is not afraid of breaking his fingers.

**Tamer**

After she gets into the cactus juice by accident and winds up standing naked on Zuko's throne, firing off ancient antique statues at innocent court members, the task of subduing her—"She's your wife; leash her!"—falls to Sokka.

**Persistent**

Yue turned into the moon, Suki made him put on a dress, Ty Lee left him tied up in a very ungraceful position, and Toph provided him a bruise that will never heal—but because the last means she is with him still, Sokka is willing to endure that small pain.

**Enough**

The only thing he ever Bends is her body beneath his, and that's just fine by Sokka.

**Moron**

"Dude," he opines to the distraught chieftain, surveying the destruction of the once pristine village square, "it's your own fault you told her she was too young to drink."

**Reign**

They go to visit King Bumi, and when Toph asks Sokka that night if he would ever like to live in Omashu, he glances up from a letter he's writing to tell her idly no, not really; the next morning at breakfast, he is too engrossed in various sausages to hear her inform the monarch, "Thanks for the offer, but you'll have to find someone else."

**Rule**

He loves the South Pole, visits it often, and is its favorite son, but ultimately he declines the headmanship with a mumble about sensitive feet.

**Nerve**

Working on prizing the arrow from his shoulder, she scolds, "Spirits, stop being such a baby!" and Sokka is angry until he realizes she is scowling at her own trembling hands.

**Worry**

He has known her ten years before he hears her scream, and Sokka reflects just before he succumbs to darkness that it must mean something if the first time is his name.

**Present**

For his birthday he doesn't expect to receive anything from Toph, but she gives him the best surprise of his life so far when she plunks down a familiar weapon on the table before him, its blade still covered in dirt, and supplies loftily, "I thought you might want this back."

**Finished**

She finally just crawls into bed with him, bites his ear, and snarls into the skin of his neck, "Is this obvious enough for you or do I have to take off my bra too?"

**Estimate  
**

On a moonless eve when their fire is a ring of smoldering embers and the sounds of the surrounding forest have begun to trickle into their campsite, Toph nudges him with her hip and relates softly, "You know, I bet you fart at least fifty times a night."

**Caretaker**

The girl who could crack the world in half pillows his head on her knees and wipes his fevered brow with her thumb, leaving behind in the sweat there a small brown stripe and the slow sensation of mending.

**Visible**

Covered head to toe in mud following an unfortunate incident with a boarcupine during bathtime, Sokka stalks past Toph in all his naked glory, not that it should matter to _her_, and only realizes later the reason behind her helpless, hiccupping laughter.

**Playful**

Tickling a master Earthbender is risky business: the first time he tries it, she gives him a black eye, a broken rib, and the gentle rejoinder of, "Better luck next time, Snoozles."

**Fear**

She mistakes his cries of joy at finding delicious berries for screams of pain and comes rushing across a frozen pond to him—later, after he's pulled her gray, shivering form from the ice, she clutches at his arm tightly enough to draw blood and lets him think it's because she's angry.

**Stamina**

She rocks against him, hard and fast and relentless; her teeth sing over his flesh and when she whispers, "Is that all you've got?" he finds that no, actually, it isn't.

**Bender**

They wake up one fine spring morning covered in purple dye and horseradish, and all Sokka can think to say to Toph as he squints blearily at her across the bed is, "Hey, you shaved your head."

**Retch**

Mopping at her mouth with a cloth, she shivers under the press of his concerned hand and growls, "I hope you like kids."

**Classy**

He's asleep and she runs her fingers curiously over his face, and she has almost grudgingly admitted to herself that she needs to give him a little more credit when he blows a warm, drooly spit-bubble right into her palm.

**Match(ed)**

It starts off innocent, just two teenagers wrestling on the warm summer grass, and then her tongue is in his mouth and her hands under his shirt and really, yeah, neither of them cares about winning at all.

**Shortcomings**

She folds herself into him when it is over, her chin tucked in his chest, her hand on his hip, and whispers dubiously into the dark at last, "You make noises like a dying chicken when you do that, but I guess it's kind of cute."


	23. DEF

**Commentary: **How would _you_ feel if you lost everything over and over again?

**Words: **1,006

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_**D **_**is for **_**day**_**.**

On an afternoon much like any other, after Aang has been trained and pummeled into the ground and Katara is making dinner, Sokka looks up from his map and realizes that the smallest member of their group has gone missing.

"Hey," he prods his sister, "where's Toph?"

Katara spares him a short glance above the edge of their cookpot. "No clue."

"Hm." Turning his gaze to the Avatar, Sokka ventures, "Aang? Seen Toph?"

Sprawled on his back next to the sleeping Appa, Aang provides a faint twitch and an even fainter moan. Dark bruises in the shapes of small fists color his torso—his flesh is caked in a slurry of sweat and silt, and he smells terrible even at a distance. Sokka can't help but feel bad for the guy. Aang might have saved the world and turned Ozai into a threat the equivalent of lukewarm fettuccini, but that doesn't make him a truly accomplished Earthbender in Toph's (somewhat unique) view. The relentless blind master continues to school the once-monk like the war never ended.

Folding his map, Sokka stuffs it back into its place amidst their belongings and announces, "I'm gonna go find her." Katara smiles in approval. Aang might be smiling too, or that could just be a grimace of pain—it's too hard to tell. "This area is potentially crawling with anti-Zuko supporters," rationalizes Sokka. "If I'm not back in twenty minutes—"

"I'll know you've been distracted by something shiny," his sibling supplies. Flicking her fingers in his direction, she insists, "Go on, go on. And if you see any mintberry, bring back a sprig."

With a huff that's more for show than anything else, Sokka rises and walks away from camp. Around him the woods are full of chatter and song. Late afternoon sunlight dapples through the trees, coloring the ground golden here, shading it dark there—leaves rustle, and in a thicket nearby a cowdeer watches him warily. Not interested in hunting now, though, Sokka swings his arms and focuses on simply enjoying the evening. This atmosphere is a nice change of pace from Appa's saddle (and really, a man can only take so much windburn), the weather is warm, and—if the scent drifting on the breeze is any indication—dinner's almost done. The war is over. In the wake of Zuko's coronation and at that monarch's request, the Avatar's group is traveling across the Earth Kingdom to spread the new Fire Lord's message of goodwill. The colonies have been reabsorbed by the Kingdom too; methodically ousted by the group's efforts, the Fire Nation's lingering military regiments are marching home. Thanks to the Avatar's presence on the continent, the pull-out has been—for the most part—bloodless on both sides.

Hakoda is safe. Suki is home. Governments are slowly—albeit surely—concocting treaties, issuing apologies, and making peace. Zuko is crowned. Aang is alive; Momo is still a peach thief. Judging by the softness in her eyes and the perpetual blush on her cheeks, Katara is in love—and, well, that love has _always _been reciprocated, hasn't it, since its subject first opened his eyes on the ice all those months ago? Picking a burr from his trousers, Sokka strides deeper into the forest and reflects that he'll eventually have a bald brother-in-law.

As for the tribesman himself, he's happy. He might not have Space Sword anymore, sure, or Boomerang; his leg will always twinge now in cold weather. Those things aside, though, Sokka's pretty much got it made. He's a war hero. His father—no, his whole _tribe_—is proud of him. Everywhere he goes he is offered a variety of smoked meats.

Life could not be sweeter.

Stepping into a bright summery clearing, Sokka spots Toph lying spread-eagled in a square of shifting cloud-shadow. He smirks and cups a hand to his lips to call out to her, but then light lances over her, throwing her small form into sharp definition, and—

_**E **_**is for **_**end**_**.**

Toph's whole front is covered in blood.

Her name dies on his tongue in favor of a quick, horrified inhale. As though in a dream he starts for her, his legs so heavy, so slow and even though she can't be more than twenty feet away it seems like leagues. His foot plunges into a mole-gopher hole; his knee twists. He staggers, screams out, "_TOPH!_" There's a dark sticky ring around her mouth, a wet triangle splashed down her chest—her hands in the grass, the palms up, are painted liberally in swathes of gleaming red fluid—

Off-balance, he slams into the soil next to her and she jackknifes aright. Her fingers hook into claws and the ground of the clearing roils, immediately on the offensive. "What?" she demands, her head swiveling toward him. "Sokka? What is it? What's wrong?"

_**F **_**is for **_**fool**_**.**

The light on her face shifts again and suddenly the smear on her mouth is more orange than red, too thin to be blood. He inhales a second time, a hoarse sob: the cloyingly sweet scent of something fills his nostrils. As he fists his hands in the grass there is a soft squelching sound, and he looks down to find a wild strawberry squashed to a pulp in his quivering fingers.

Tears spurt down his cheeks anyway. Hot. Thick.

"Sokka?" Toph rocks onto her knees and reaches for him. She bares her teeth. Countless little seeds are stuck in them, and through the blurry haze of his vision he can see that almost the entire clearing is littered with half-gnawed bits of fruit. "Sokka," she repeats urgently, and her fingers touch his knee, smudging the pale cloth of the trousers there, "are you hur—"

He lunges. His arms clench around her; he yanks her close and thrusts his face into her hair and cries, he just _cries_, ignoring her soft grunts of surprise because for an instant he really thought she was gone (_again_, his tortured mind whispers, _again again __**again**_), and in that small moment without her he felt himself lost.


	24. Reply

**Commentary: **Super quick scribble here. Five minutes! I almost didn't post it, but I kinda like it, so…

**Words: **500

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**Word THIRTY-FOUR: Reply**

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"What are you doing?"

Sokka blinked and turned his gaze quickly down to the girl at his side. Her face was a flushed circle under the hood of her borrowed parka; he couldn't see her eyes, not that it mattered, but her lower lip stuck out like a shelf and snowflakes were already melting on it. "Huh?" he ventured.

The parka shuddered as Toph sighed. Her breath coalesced into a thick white cloud, blurred, dissipated again. "What are you _doing_?" she repeated. Over the snow her boots shifted, crunched. Her hand tightened in his elbow.

Frowning now, Sokka turned to face his companion. "What do you mean? I'm not doing anything."

"Tui _La_, Snoozles, I'm blind, not _stupid_." Through even the thick cloth of his tunic and the padding beneath it Sokka could feel the press of Toph's fingernails. He winced instinctively. "You're flailing around like a wounded mooselion," she went on. "Why? Is Appa crashing or something?" She turned her head into the harsh breeze and cupped her free hand about her ear. A few strands of ink-dark hair straggled through her fingers, slapping at the hood's edge. "I don't hear a bald kid in distress…"

For a moment Sokka stood confused. In the next breath it came to him, though, and he attempted, "Wait… you mean this?" Lifting an arm, he gave it an experimental sway.

"Yes, that," agreed Toph. "Except speed it up and add idiocy."

"I'm waving," Sokka said peaceably. Prying his elbow free, he took her arm and guided it aloft. He moved it back and forth in the air, the palm out, the fingers splayed. "It's like this"—she inclined her head up toward him; there were snowflakes on her eyelashes as well as her lip, and he smiled—"and I was doing it because it means, I guess, uh… it's an acknowledgment of someone leaving and your wish to see them again soon."

He let go of her arm. It hovered a few seconds, puffy and blue in the parka, idling to and fro like a flag—but then she dropped it and grouched, "They know that already, though. Come on. It's cold as f—"

"Fine, fine," Sokka allowed, and escorted Toph back into the village.

A few days later it was the Earthbender's turn to leave, and the ferry at the fore of the ice belched smoke as it prowled for its single expected passenger. Toph shuddered in relief on the ramp up the stern—when Sokka made to hug her she swatted him away and snarled, "You reek of fish guts."

"I love you too," he sang. As she stalked away down the ship's length he called, "Don't forget to write!"

He waited on the dock's end afterward, squinting into the wind at the departing ferry and its smoldering plume. When it had dwindled to a smudge he turned to go, and he almost missed the green speck near the ferry's prow that drifted high to beckon to him grudgingly.


	25. Chromium

**Commentary: **One of these is bound to raise some eyebrows. If you lack an open mind, skip **Between**.

Otherwise, more one-sentence stories! I hope you enjoy them. =)

**Words: **1,075

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**Word THIRTY-FIVE: Chromium**

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**Spectator**

"I'll kill you"—she snarls this into his mouth in front of _everyone they know, _oh Spirits, and Katara looks like she might just die of smugness but Toph, wow, she's still threatening him and vying for his tonsils at the same time—"I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll _kill you _if you _ever _do anything like that _again_."

**Oblivious**

He clutches at her fingers and the touch is so fervent, so desperate that she wonders for a moment if he's finally gotten it, but then he whispers into her ear, "Toph, _dude_, look at that guy's nosehair!" and she is forced to conclude, _Nope, still a moron._

**Homesick**

Sitting bolt upright in his bedroll that first night after she joins them, he looks across the campsite and finds her with her face in her knees, her shoulders trembling; in silence he goes to her, curls his arm around her, and when it is over they never speak of it again.

**Dinner**

Toph only tries to cook once, and the result is so terrible that it leaves the single unfortunate taster in bed for a week: the failed chef laments, "Poor _Suki_!" and doesn't sound a bit sincere.

**Victim**

"Oh," she says, surprised, a small silhouette against the explosion, "it hurts," and when she falls into his arms with her back a red, runny ruin of blistering tissue, Sokka can't decide what's worse: the injury or that Toph admitted its existence in the first place.

**Momentum**

In the darkness she turns to face him, and when she breathes into the curve of his jaw, "You love her, don't you, Sokka?" he can't bring himself to say no, no, of course not, and for that reason she smacks him from the sheets with a fan and gets him moving—_finally_—in the right direction.

**His/Hers**

"Is he really yours to have?" Zuko postulates during one of her unexpected visits, and Toph only replies by hitting him in the groin with a boulder; however, she privately reasons that Sokka is damn well under her ownership because it's only fair, after all, given that she already belongs to him.

**That'll teach you to stare.**

A bead of sweat trickles down the well of her spine to just above the hem of her pants, where it pools in a little wet band before dripping across the curve of her hip; she turns, whipping sideways, and the perspiration flies out in a rainbow-spangled spatter before hitting him right in the eye.

**Between**

One pulls Toph's shirt with hard fingers and nibbles at her cheek, makeup smearing, breath soft, rapid, sweet; the other drags away her trousers and sinks his teeth into her shoulder, and the Earthbender manages to think, _I didn't see this coming, haha_, before putting her own hands to good use.

**Change of heart**

She hated baths as a child; as an adult she dislikes getting caught in the rain, or walking through puddles, or crossing streams, but when his arm falls over her in the dark and he rolls against her, his snores like a current, she decides, _Well, water isn't so bad_, and falls asleep to the sound of the waves in him.

**Turnabout's fair play**

She puts a pricklesnake in his bedroll; later he goes on an errand and comes back with a new outfit to replace her other so full of holes, and she spends the next week obliviously walking around in lurid shimmery pink pants.

**Food fight**

The weapon hits the side of her head with such force that her neck snaps sideways; red dribbles down her ear, her mouth falls open, and then she lunges across the table at him with a whooping snarl to slam her own fruit tart straight into his face.

**Fear I have none**

She sets up her earth tent in the deepest, blackest shadow, and when he incredulously asks the child, "Aren't you afraid of the dark?" she blinks blankly toward him and replies, "I dunno—what's that?"

**On a hot day there's nothing better than…**

"I don't like cold things," she grouches, but the world shudders into glory when the tribesman unabashedly thrusts the tip of his strawberry chillcream cone into her mouth.

**He was the only man in his village, but he also had a sister.**

She complains about it for three hours and thirty-two minutes before Sokka finally yanks her aside and braids her hair; when he is finished it looks damn good, but Toph ruins it by stating, "Wow, Snoozles, you're more of a girl than I thought."

**Fix**

He is almost crying, holding the chipped boomerang in his hands, but then she pinches away the problem between her thumb and forefinger and demands, "What's for dinner?"

**Tolerance**

It's all textures, every color of the rainbow, and—"She can't hold her liquor," Sokka explains to Zuko as the Earthbender pukes into yet another treasured heirloom vase—plentiful.

**Appreciation**

"I burned it," he warns her, but she tears into it with all the ravenous delight of a wolfmonkey anyway, sucking in relish at the black charred bits in her teeth.

**Shield**

She works herself nearly to death reinforcing the tunnels near Omashu, all because he mentions having been trapped there before by a cave-in—no one besides Toph, not even a badgermole, is allowed to dump dirt on Sokka.

**Oops**

Half an earlobe later, Sokka decides that letting Toph cut his hair was probably not his brightest idea.

**Trapped**

Deep in the heart of the forest nearby Gaoling, Sokka discovers a series of scars in the earth, mile-wide craters dimpled now with small sheepish sprigs of grass—asking Toph about them, she shrugs and admits, "I was kind of an angry kid."

**Apology**

"I'm sorry I made you wait so long," he murmurs idly as they are packing up camp one morning, and she doesn't know what he's talking about until he leans across the carcass of the dead fire to drop a hesitant kiss on the corner of her mouth.

**Sunburn**

Though the afternoon nap produces a few unpleasant side effects, the delicate press of his hands on her flesh as they rub in the aloe afterward is not one of them.

**Mischief**

He knows he's in for an awesome night when, fondling a melon in one hand and a coconut in the other, she turns to him and asks, "Which do you think weighs about as much as Zuko's head?"


	26. Respite

**Commentary: **=)

**Words: **500

* * *

**Word THIRTY-SIX: Respite**

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Toph was not often desirous of privacy or given to fits of introspection, and so when she asked to be alone one afternoon not long after they'd made it into the Fire Nation, her friends were surprised by but agreeable to her request.

"Sure, Toph," said Aang. He rose, amicably dusted off his pants, and left the cave.

"No problem," Katara provided. She made to follow Aang. At the entrance to the cave, though, she paused and looked back at the crosslegged Earthbender. "Why, though?" she pursued. "Is everything okay?"

"Now Sugar Queen," sighed Toph, "a lady of proper bearing need never explain her request for it to be recognized, but simply vocalize it in a manner befitting her station." At Katara's startled silence, Toph rolled her eyes and muttered, "Settle for _just because_." And since she wasn't at heart malicious, the smaller girl tacked on, "I'm fine, really. Thanks."

Half-prickling but placated, Katara exited the cave. The sounds of the conversation she immediately started with Aang at her departure wafted back on the stale air. Taking no notice, Toph scratched at an insect bite on her arm and prodded the last of her company, "Well?"

Sokka blinked across the cavern at his best friend. "I don't want to leave," he informed her simply. "I'm comfortable. And full." He provided a small belch to illustrate this. "Exercising so soon after a meal isn't a good idea. But"—and he rocked to his feet—"since you asked politely and I'm _such _a nice guy-AAAI—"

The floor of the cave swept the tribesman up and out of the group's hideaway. He landed unceremoniously on his butt before his sister and Aang, the latter of whom extended a helpful hand. Sokka took it. Heaving himself aright, he grouched to the assembly, "What's eating her?"

Aang smiled. "Maybe she wants to meditate."

"And maybe I want to convert my entire wardrobe to frilly dresses." Sokka shook his head. "Katara? What do you think?"

"Some people like to be alone to… cry?" hazarded the Waterbender.

"Yeeeeah, I'm gonna go with no on that one." Stationing himself vaguely close to the cave's entrance, Sokka sat down to ponder. A few minutes later Aang and Katara wandered off to utilize a nearby stream's currents to practice, and the tribesman polished his trusty boomerang. A pale sickle moon appeared on the horizon, climbing slowly up the sky's swell.

Not quite two hours after issuing her request in the first place, Toph exited the cave. Aiming a yawn in his direction, she stretched—her spine crackled—and asked Sokka, "Did I miss anything?"

"Just a sec." Lowering his boomerang, he peered curiously at Toph. "Did you ask us all to leave so you could _nap_?"

"Yep." Leaning over, Toph began to pick at her toes.

"_Why_?"

She shrugged. "I have heightened senses. Keen hearing. An acute sense of smell."

"And?"

"And I needed a break." Toph found a pebble and flicked it at him. "You guys fart continuously."


	27. Beauty

**Commentary: **A short!fic for a Sunday afternoon. Just a couple of minutes, but I hope you enjoy it.

**Words: **300

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**Word THIRTY-SEVEN: Beauty**

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She was beautiful in the dress.

It was green, of course. As one of the wealthiest families in the Earth Kingdom, the Bei Fongs were all about flying their nation's colors at any opportunity. Toph's gala outfit was one such prime chance. And it wasn't just _green_-green, reflected Sokka as he stared at the dress. It was all _shades _of green: viridian, emerald, mint, celery, lime, avocado. Light fell in through the window and played over the fabric in a shimmer, and one moment Toph was bedecked in meadow hues, the next in forest finery. It was miraculous, thought Sokka. Mystifying, even.

She turned to face him. The dress plunged in a sharp dip down her collar and Spirits, Toph wasn't twelve years old anymore, not by a long shot. The two jiggling palmfuls rendered halfway visible below the garment's gauzy neckpiece said as much. The slow, sensuous sinch of her waist lower still screamed it.

"Sokka," Toph murmured. She moved to him and the dress, because it was the long almost-dragging sort, dusted over the tops of her feet. Bare and dark and crosshatched in grass stains, those feet stopped with their toes touching his. She rolled forward on them and the dress, Tui La, it slithered against his chest. The throb of her granite heart drummed into him, filled his empty spaces. He lifted his hands and they hovered inches apart from her flesh and the fabric covering it, reverent.

"Sokka," Toph said again. She grinned at him. "The door's locked. What are you waiting for, huh?"

"You're beautiful," he answered stupidly. He fingered a sleeve, ginger, awed. "Just beauti—"

"Whatever," she dismissed. Catching his hands, she guided them intently to the aforementioned palmfuls. "_Appreciate me_."

She was much more beautiful, Sokka decided later, _without _the dress.


	28. Comb

**Commentary: **Set post-series. Toph and Sokka work on quelling a rebellion of some kind. There are… tangles.

**Words: **1,160

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**Word THIRTY-EIGHT: Comb**

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He stripped off his clothes and dropped them in a pile. One of his socks landed on her foot. Grimacing, Toph kicked it back toward him. "Keep your nast to yourself," she instructed. The rule came without much bite, though, and she grunted as she peeled free her own clothing too. The tunic came first, crusted in grime and blood—then the pants, so stiff from soot and sweat that they could stand on their own. Her headband was a ruin of wet, squelching fabric half-sizzled by a burn mark, and with only the smallest sentimental pang she tossed it. The river gobbled it down and swept it away.

"You liked that," Sokka said apologetically.

She shrugged. "Hundreds more like it." Without the band to hold it up, her hair spilled down over her shoulders in unruly spikes and spires, tickling what few patches of unmarked skin it could find. She grappled with it clumsily. When she had managed to wind it into a knot again atop her head, she told Sokka simply, "We're good for about an hour—the regiment lost our trail, feckless morons," and stepped into the river.

Winter was mild in her hometown of Gaoling, but here in the hinterland beyond Ba Sing Se the season cut the land and lanced the sky mercilessly. The river's water nearby the bank was only ankle-deep, but the fervency of the current threw spray up as high as Toph's thighs and it was—

"F-f-fuh-uck-kuh-_hing COLD_," gasped the Earthbender. The stones in the riverbed shifted and she went down on one knee. Frigid water eagerly washed over her. In the span of time between breaths she was soaked to the core and, as though to add insult to injury, her hair came undone. Cursing and snarling, she clawed at the slopping stack. Her companion knew better than to intervene and watched from a safe distance, glad she couldn't see his smirk.

As the frustrated noises subsided, he ventured, "Has the beast been tamed?" Toph performed a rude hand gesture and Sokka, chuckling, stepped into the river next to her. It _was _cold, but his birthright lent him tolerance. Settling into a crouch in the lapping current, he nudged Toph and offered, "Soap?"

She snatched the square from his extended hand and scrubbed it resolutely across her body, shedding finally all but her breastbindings and undergarments in the process. While she wasn't the biggest fan of bathing, Toph could make the occasional exception. After all, being covered in dirt was one thing. Being covered in gore was another. Rubbing away a great collection of sticky blood that didn't belong to her and a small portion that did, Toph clenched her teeth and muttered, brandishing the soap high, "This shit stings."

Sokka glanced over at the froth of dingy bubbles that covered his best friend's quaking limbs. "It's medicinal," he supplied. As an afterthought he tacked on, "Sorry."

"Hmph." A few moments later she tossed the soap back to him and dropped resignedly into the river to let the lapping waves rinse away her grime. Now and then she shivered. She was pale in the water's darker clasp, her shoulders rounded quartz mounds above its surface, the tangles of her hair like questing cypress branches. She plucked a few thorns from that mass and flicked them into the water one by one.

"Okay?" asked Sokka at length. He slogged over and splashed down next to her, cheerily ignoring the scowl she aimed in his direction.

"Fine," she agreed. Lifting an arm, she motioned to a cut there. "This hurts. Is it bad?"

He leaned over and eyed the wound. "Nah. A little gash—might scar."

At that Toph beamed. "Cool." She ran a careful finger over the split skin, probing it, then asked, "You?" The query was brisk enough, but she turned toward him a bit even so. Beneath the water her other hand ran its knuckles into his knee.

"I'm good, I'm good." Sokka puffed out his chest. He drummed his fingers over the thin swell, _brrrpa-brrrpa-brmmm_. "Got a couple nicks and cuts, same as you. Nothing major."

With a nod of satisfaction, Toph seemingly shifted her attention away from him. Sokka watched out of the corner of his eye as she let loose the snarl of her hair. It fell down her knobby spine almost to the river's surface, and it was with a grouchy mutter that she leaned forward and plunged the whole mass into the water. If possible it became even more of a twisted mess. Helplessly Toph pawed at it.

Scooting closer, Sokka prodded the woman's hip with a finger. She froze. "Let me," he insisted, and before she could voice a protest, the tribesman sank his hands into her freezing hair and ladled it more securely into his grasp. Blood and soot and riverwater squelched up under his palms. There were even a few twigs ensnared in the thready black bulk, and Sokka proclaimed it an, "Absolute _disaster_," as he set to combing it into order.

"Excuse me for not being a pretty little princess," Toph snapped, hunched under his touch.

"Dude," exclaimed Sokka, "these are someone's _teeth_." He prized free three little white squares and rattled them in his fist next to Toph's ear. "_Molars_, Toph. Caught in your _hair_."

Bristling fit to rival a rosebush, the Earthbender angled her head such that her face was pointed over her shoulder at him. It was more for his benefit than hers—for a blind person, Toph had a killer glare. She pinned it on him now. Sokka's stomach prickled uneasily. "Want to add yours to the collection, Snoozles?"

"Easy, easy," grumbled Sokka. "I'm sorry, okay? Just hold still."

Toph did. As quickly as he could, Sokka lathered her unkempt mane with the soap she'd previously used to wash herself. He rinsed it too. He had no comb and thus employed his fingers to both straighten the slippery locks and to rid them of detritus: more twigs, a leaf, a coin, two feathers, a quill, a shuriken. Occasionally the Earthbender hissed as water, soap, and fingertips made friends with the plentiful cuts on her scalp, but she was less squirmy, realized Sokka, than his sister had been as a child. She was _definitely _not as loud.

"There," he said when he was finished. He drew his hands back into his lap—numb from the cold and raw too, they dangled against his bare thighs before the flutter of his sodden loincloth. His thumbs, spent for their efforts, felt like stone.

Toph sat up straight and tested the give and pull of her hair. It hung down her back now in a sleek heavy curtain, more or less untangled, some parts of it dry. Huffing her pleasure, she admitted, "Not bad," and stood. The mass swept easily behind her mostly-naked form like the ink-wet bristles of a calligraphy brush.

As a man fond of good penmanship, Sokka smiled.


	29. Tunnel

**Commentary: **Set post-series. =)

**Words: **1,567

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**Word THIRTY-NINE: Tunnel**

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They are his idea, the tunnels, and their joint project thereafter. "It would be awesome," Toph remembers him saying. His heartbeat is so fervent, his voice choked in excitement—he sounds like a child, and Toph smiles to hear it. "We'd start near Omashu first, of course. They already have a system going." Sagely he nods, rocking on the balls of his feet. "We could copy that," he resumes. "And then we could just branch out, you know, following the mountain ranges…" His fingers walk down what is presumably a map of her home nation. The table beneath it is stone, and Toph feels his touch as easily as if it is on her own body. His fingertips are rough, his nails short and ragged at the edges from nervous nibbling.

"Before you know it," he enthuses, "with my maps and your tunnels, this whole nation would have a mail system!"

Toph believes him. Believes _in _him. And why not? Sokka is the smartest guy she knows, not to mention the most steadfast. Typically if he has an idea he either sees it through to fruition or hones it until it yields positive results. He's also kind of earned her favor forever—never will Toph forget that he clung to her as she dangled from the edge of a crashing airship, his fingers her only line between life and certain death. It is the understatement of all understatements to say Toph would do just about anything for the dude, and when Sokka admits his idea to her, Spirits, she is downright eager to help him. She is the one who pounds his back, causing him to spew ale halfway across the tavern, and shrieks in his ear over the din that, "_YOU SHOULD TALK TO THE EARTH KING, SNOOZLES."_

The idea is more than just a giant mail system, really. It is an equally giant endeavor in peacemaking. When the tunnels are finished and ready, Sokka explains to Toph, Earthbenders will be needed to move the stone trolleys carrying goods through them. Lighting the darkness is a job best left to Firebenders. Waterbenders will foreseeably ferry goods across the myriad underground streams coursing through the Kingdom's mountains.

A few days later and as Bosco plays with a rubber ball, Sokka bends on one knee in said Kingdom's stately court and delivers his design. Toph lingers behind him, chuffing her toes on the smooth stone floor. Her best friend rationalizes to the listening monarch that once the elemental Benders are seen to be working together without tearing out each other's throats, their representative nations will follow suit. "Not that it'll happen overnight," he says, "but it _will _happen." He pauses. Toph grins, and Sokka finishes, "Besides, Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom or Water Tribe—_everyone _loves getting mail."

The Earth King gives Sokka's plan his blessing. Toph gives it her muscle. For months they explore the tunnels near Omashu for research purposes. As it turns out, creating a giant mail system that is also supposed to bring about a giant cultural peace comes with a giant host of problems. The first of those problems comes to light when Toph "talks" to the badgermoles. She learns how they do stuff here in Omashu versus how they did stuff in Gaoling, analyzes the composition of their passageways through the mountains. She discovers that those passageways are delicate things, subjected as they are to continuous, unending pressure on all sides. Most badgermole holes aren't meant to be permanent, and Toph isn't accustomed to building lasting structures either. It takes her almost three weeks to figure out how to honeycomb through the mountains without all her work collapsing behind her at the slightest sneeze.

And then there are hordes of other things to contend with too, mounting one on top of the other. Poisonous fungus. Dead air. Pockets of explosive natural gas. Non-Earthbending idiots who stick their _lighted torches _into said pockets of explosive natural gas…

Now, after almost a month of toil, there is a strange noise. _Sssssfweet!_ Toph has a single second to think, _Hey, that sounded like a fart, _before a wash of heat prickles over her skin. She yelps and Sokka shrieks, instinctively jabbing his torch higher into the cranny where the natural gas has lingered, harmless, for maybe millennia until now. Normally air is Aang's element, but this kind has been with the earth so long Toph can feel it, can sense its hunger. It eats at the fire of the torch, swells, bloats. The stone around it buckles.

"No, you moron, no no _no_!" She leaps at Sokka, trying maybe to knock away the torch. Her cry is loud. It is also late. With a sound like a great roar the gas ignites; the tunnel explodes, the ceiling belching flame. Its rubble smashes into him. For a moment he is a silhouette in her special vision, his face an open-mouthed mask of shock, his arms flung wide. Then he is gone, spirited away by a tongue of rock and smoke down into the heart of the mountain. Snarling, Toph follows him.

A flash of a hand here, a leg there—the rocks shift over him like a blanket as they fall and roll and grind, and while the picture she receives of him is incomplete and fuzzy, her imagination fills in the blanks. She digs her fingers into the firm flesh of the mountain and _wrenches_, screaming things: his name, mostly. Stone manages to curl in a slow half-bowl around him—it's hard to Bend when the earth is running under her feet like water—before the day's second terrible sound gives her pause. _Crunch_.

She thinks it's his body being broken in the teeth of the mountain, and then she realizes as warm wetness flows down the back of her neck, _Nope, it's just me!_

She is relieved. Next, she is unconscious.

Later, when she wakes, she is covered in a fine film of dust and pebbles have clustered merrily into one of her ears. Sitting up, she groans, wobbles, shakes free the pebbles, and probes at her aching head. Her fingers find the gash at the seam of her hairline. They mistakenly delve into it. As a result, she lurches forward onto her knees and vomits for what feels like forever. A dull, sickly throb has worked its way into her gut by the time she is finished, but—aside from what is probably a concussion—she is whole.

But what if _he _isn't?

"Sokka!" she gags. Dust fills her nostrils. She patters forward on her hands and knees, seeking any sign of her friend. She jerks to her feet, slams her head into what is apparently a low ceiling, swoons, and sits down again. "Sokka," she grates weakly. "Sokka, _damnit_"—her voice comes out clogged, silt and threatening tears together—"say something if you can hear me!"

The mountain is silent.

Clenching her throat against the hot ball of bile that rises in it, Toph climbs to her feet again and, crouching, works her way forward. She steps carefully. She hopes. She gawks, in a sense, straining her metaphorical eyes and her actual ears. Finally there is movement, the faintest flutter. She claws into the mountain and flings bits of it aside, one by one, until she comes to the source of the flutter.

It's his heartbeat. He's lying on his back in the half-bowl she made for him before the mountain soundly whooped her ass, and he seems to be all in one piece. She drops next to him, skims her hands over him. She presses her palm flat to his chest and feels the whisper of his breath in it. Next she touches his face, and it is warm and sticky near his nose, where air bubbles and froths.

Snatching at that nose, she yells, "Sokka!" Under her fingers it pops and grinds, like a stick in a fire.

He screams himself awake and heaves upright. His forehead crashes into hers. Tears of pain squirt down his cheeks and touch her own like hot sparks, and he gasps into her mouth. He tastes like dirt and grit and stale air, and she loves it because it means he's alive, _alive_. Clutching at him, she buries her fingers in the fabric of his tunic. He curses, muffled. As he gathers himself and wipes at his seeping eyes, she says nothing.

At last he remarks, sullen, "My dose. Idds broggen."

His nose. It's broken.

But he spits and then asks, voice clearer now, "You okay?" His hands feather down her sides, up her spine. They cup her skull last, and she jerks away from his questing palms before he can go digging around in her hair.

"I'm fine," she growls at him. She finds that she's unable to let him go, her hands still hooked in the folds of his tunic. Tears are threatening again. They fall before she can think to stopper them, oozing down her face, and it is Sokka who wipes them away, his thumbs hard and heavy against her flesh.

"Toph?" he asks, alarmed. "What hurts?"

"You do," she snaps angrily.

For a moment he is startled, quiet. He says next, though, crooning through his crushed sinuses, "Aw Toph, I didn't know you _cared_."

She sobs around her furious sneer and reaches up in the dark to smack him.


	30. Lesson

**Commentary: **=)

**Words: **525

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**Word FORTY: Lesson**

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"Hands on hips!" She demonstrated.

"Hands on… hips." He shifted uncomfortably under her touch, chewing his lip. Her fingers fell flat in the grooves low on his torso, pressing idly the muscles there. In the space above her waist his own hands hovered, anxious, too big. "Uhm," he said.

She blew a hank of hair impatiently from its perpetual position over her eyes and demanded, "What's the problem?"

"Nothing. N… nothing, eheh." Carefully he lowered his touch. His palms ghosted over the flare of her hips and he froze, his breath thick in his throat. If he curled his fingers, he thought maybe they would touch behind her back.

She sighed again, harder this time. Leaning back a little, she lifted her hands and slapped them over his, forcing them into a stronger press against her flesh. His thumbs forked in toward her navel. He swallowed. Her stomach rumbled.

"I'm hungry," she said unapologetically, and went on, "_manliness_, Snoozles. Grow some. Yeah?"

Sokka scowled. "Hey. As far as I'm concerned, this is the _least _manly thing I've ever tried to learn to do."

"Which is exactly why you shouldn't have any problems with it," Toph agreed breezily. Smirking at him, she continued, "I mean, no, seriously. Stop being so afraid to put your hands where they should go." With a grumble Sokka tightened his fingers, and the Earthbender approved, "Great! Now, slide your hands back and give my butt a nice firm squeeze."

"_What_?" yelped Sokka. Scandalized, he jerked away. "I asked you to teach me how to _dance_, Toph, not how grope people!"

She leered. The expression was remarkably effective given that it was coming from a blind person, and Sokka shivered. "Snoozles," she insisted, "women like a man with a little _attitude_."

"Do you mean assitude? Because I'm pretty sure if I go around this party grabbing at female buttock the whole time, I'm gonna get both of mine kicked."

"You could grab at _male _buttock!"

"_Toph_."

The Earthbender rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine." She opened her arms, wiggling her fingers. "Come back here." When Sokka reluctantly did, she repositioned him and said as she began to lead him around the clearing, "It's like this, okay? Step-step-sweep, step-step-sweep, bend! Step-step-sweep, step-step-sweep, spin! Aha, good!" She relaxed in the circle of his hands. "Now you guide me."

He gave it his best. Once, twice he tripped, and on the third try they completed a circuit around the clearing without incident or maiming by tree root. "This isn't so hard," Sokka observed as Toph's head, soft and sweaty, came to lodge in the dip beneath his chin.

"Nah. Simple enough."

They swept around the circle of trees a final time. Slowing to a stop, Sokka provided, "Thanks."

"Think you got it?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Definitely."

"Good!" Beaming, Toph slid her hands down his ribs and then back behind his hips. She filled her palms with the taut rounds of his buttocks. She squeezed them. Hard. "Look out, though," she warned. "Sometimes when the guys don't have enough attitude, the women take matters into their own hands." She gave him another thoughtful fondle and finished, "Literally."


	31. Superlative

**Commentary: **We interrupt your regularly scheduled _Pot Calling Kettle _to bring you a special addition to _Shakedown_. Hope you enjoy it!

**Words**: 2,000

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**Word FORTY-ONE: Superlative**

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Sokka studied his target. Licking his lips, he tensed the appropriate muscles—flexed them a second later. His leg shot out, a pillar of strength; his foot smashed into the target courtesy of his excellent aim. The vanquished pinecone went scuttering off the path and into the underbrush. Birds took startled wing. A disturbed catowl hooted at the traveling group reproachfully.

"Nice," Aang supplied.

Grinning, Sokka felt a small pang of pride. It was quickly replaced by a sharper pang of inadequacy, though, when the Avatar spotted the next pinecone on the path and, puffing out his cheeks, sent it soaring off into the sunset with only the faintest huff.

"Nice," echoed Sokka grudgingly. "Real… real nice."

Before Aang could reply, Katara noted, "Hey guys, look! The river bends here!" And it did, a thin blue snake that cut westward across the shallow plain. In the great distance it tapered and finally dissolved into a dark haze. Sokka squinted. That haze was the start of the clustered forested country surrounding the higher Kingdom provinces, and in one of those provinces rested their eventual destination: Gaoling, Toph's hometown. Despite that she had no interest in staying there long term, Toph had expressed a desire to "see" her parents again. Desperate to get away from the raucous festivities in the Fire Nation celebrating the war's end and Zuko's coronation, Aang had leapt at the chance to escort his Earthbending teacher home. Naturally Katara had followed them, and Sokka, not nearly ready to let his little sister fly off into the great yonder unsupervised, had booked himself a place in Appa's familiar saddle.

Four days ago they had crossed into the Earth Kingdom, taking the back roads in an effort to both avoid the hordes of adoring masses—"It sucks not getting all the free food, though," Toph had opined—and to simply relax. The weather was perfect for it. In the days the air hung heavy and warm over the gang—several times already they had stopped to swim. For the evenings the temperature dropped, the moon rose crisply, coolly, and they sat together around fires and laughed, the pressure of the world upon them still but lessened since Ozai's commitment to a Fire Nation prison. Red banners across the continents were falling and the season's leaves with them. Autumn had crept over the land. Soon, Aang told his friends, frost would cover the grass in the mornings, and after that snow would sift down from the heavens too in blankets, in carpets.

Now, though, the realm remained lush, the river unmarked as yet by ice and the sluggish spawning troutbass that would truly herald winter's arrival. Dropping her pack to the edge of the path, Katara determined, "We'll camp here tonight. It's gorgeous, isn't it?" She motioned out across the plain and breathed, "Just look at that _sunset_."

"Yeah," Aang sighed, his eyes fixed resolutely on the assembly's only Waterbender.

"Eh." That was Toph, shrugging off her rucksack. "I've seen better."

A pause permeated the group, expectant. All eyes—even Toph's—flicked to Sokka. It was his turn to contribute. The undocumented but understood ritual of the evening called for it.

Frowning, the tribesman flung down his belongings and supplied instead, "I'll get the firewood." Without so much as a backward glance he strode into the nearest patch of scrub forest, leaving behind a puzzled sibling, an oblivious savior, and a silent Toph.

"Uhm," observed Katara after a moment. "Well, yeah. Okay. Aang? Why don't you call Appa—there's a nice field over there he can browse."

"Great idea!" The Airbender fumbled for the whistle around his neck.

"Toph"—Katara rounded on the group's last member—"maybe you could—"

"Firewood," interrupted Toph. She thumbed after Sokka. "It's a tricky business. He probably needs help." She was gone in a blink, a flash of green among, well, still more greens, and Katara heaved a sigh and threw up her hands.

For her part, Toph took her time catching up to Sokka. She knew the most dangerous thing in the scrub forest at the moment was a mangy juvenile ferretfox, no taller than her knee and more interested in mousevoles than her presence; there was no worry of ambush. The breeze felt nice, the ground familiar. Looping her arms behind her head, she wandered, humming a snatch of song she'd picked up from the Fire Nation revelers now and again. Occasionally she stooped to pick up the odd stick or two.

Eventually she emerged from the trees and found Sokka sitting at the river's edge, his knees drawn up to his chest, his chin resting on the shelf they made. Scavenging a groundnut, she tossed it toward him. It plunked satisfactorily off his skull and went rolling away into the grass again. Sokka didn't even flinch.

"So," she said, meandering up next to him. "What's the matter?" She gave his hip a prod with her toe.

Hunching away from her touch, Sokka replied instantly, "Nothing." He demanded next, "What are you doing here?"

Toph dropped her armful of sticks over the tribesman in a shower and answered, "Collecting firewood, since you lied back there about doing it yourself and I don't know about you, but I eventually want to eat dinner."

"My eye!" Sokka flailed. While he busied himself removing the various detritus from his person, Toph flopped down next to him and made herself comfortable.

When the commotion had ebbed, the Earthbender chanced again, "What's the matter?" She added, so sweetly Sokka nearly gagged, "C'mon. You can tell Momma Toph all about it."

"Okay, uhm, first? Don't ever call yourself that again." He shuddered, easing back into the grass too. "It's just way too disturbing on _every _level."

"Fine," she scoffed. "Pansy."

Sokka performed a rude gesture but made no other reply. A cricket in the reeds chirruped. The sunset sent purple streaks groping across the sky like a bruise, and finally the tribesman muttered, "I lost Space Sword."

Toph, who had been nibbling a blade of grass and wondering why Appa even bothered with such nast, blinked in surprise and turned her face in Sokka's direction. It was the first time he'd mentioned the battle aboard the airships—to her, anyway. Admittedly he'd been hanging out with Suki more than anyone else since that situation, so she had no real idea how much he'd talked about it, much less how he _felt _about it.

"Yeah," she agreed, trying to sound equal parts neutral and interested. "You did."

Pebbles on the riverbank scattered: he was shrugging. "I wish I hadn't," he grumbled. "That's all."

Toph's mouth twitched. "Wish you'd just dropped me, huh? I mean, if it'll make you feel better," she offered, "you can hurl me into the river. I know you and Katara have been teaching me to swim, but _hey_, it sounds like it's moving along pretty fast. I'll probably still drown."

Sokka swatted Toph's arm. The fact that he was able to do so and live spoke volumes about the depth of their friendship. "It's not that, so shut up," he growled. "It's… ugh. I'm back to where I started. You guys can still do all your fancy magic Bending and I'm..." He gestured helplessly, making a fist at the sky. "I'm not even the boomerang guy anymore!"

"And?" Toph rolled onto her side in the grass, propping her cheek in her hand. She stared intently through Sokka.

"And that _sucks_," the tribesman insisted. "I can't compare! _Or _compete. I can't _do _anything—"

Toph reached across the small space between them and rested two fingers gently against the swell of his lower lip.

"This," she said. "Close it."

Eyes enormous, Sokka did.

"Good. Is this sweet and surprisingly intimate of me?" She added her thumb to the touch, caressing his cheek, his jaw.

Sokka nodded vigorously. He no longer remembered how to breathe.

"Excellent! Maybe the shock will soften this a little, then." Toph drew back her hand and proceeded to slap him. His head rocked from the force of the blow; his neck cracked. In his mouth his teeth slammed together and pain exploded like a missile in his skull.

"OW! _Geez_, Toph, what the fu—"

A shadow fell over him. Suddenly Toph was on her knees and leaning across him, and her hands fisted in his shirt. She jerked him upright. Their faces were inches apart and she smelled of fading summertime, sweat and heat and dirt, and she hissed, "You can't do anything, huh? You can't compare? You can't compete? Without your precious little weapons you're just nothing, right?"

She shook him. His knuckles dragged on the bank; her fingernails dug painfully into his sternum. "I," he wheezed.

"We can Bend," she interjected. "_Thousands _can Bend. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. All over the world people can Bend, Sokka, and some are better at it than others, and still more are the best there can be, but you know what most people _can't _do, including all those Benders?" She shook him again for good measure. One of his buttons popped off and went rolling into the river. Katara would probably throw a fit over its loss.

"Uhm," Sokka attempted.

"Most people," snarled Toph, "can't _lead_." Her fingers tightened. Her knee wedged itself close against his hip, biting into the flesh there. "Look at Ozai. He was a Bender. He was one of the _best _Benders and yet, when it came to showing people what to do, when it came to setting a good example, he sucked _hardcore_, okay? But you." Spirits, her nails were like knives. "You, a non-Bender—you helped the Avatar win the war and you raised your sister to be a good person, a good _friend_, and you've made your village proud, and I followed you across flaming metal deathtraps in the _sky_, okay?"

She paused, chewing her cheek's inside. "Uh," Sokka said, his neck hot and prickly and tight, "wow, Toph, I—"

"It wasn't because of a sword or a boomerang either," Toph insisted. She let him go. He dropped back against the bank and she continued, "I didn't follow you because you had those things. Neither did Aang. Or Katara. People aren't proud of you because you're a swordsman. People don't trust you because you can throw a little bent stick around."

She stood, abruptly and almost angrily. Kicking a pinecone into the water, she finished, "It's insulting to hear you say you can't do anything when you're the one who brought us all here. _Especially _me. So stop being an asshole," she suggested, "and don't forget about the firewood. I want kebabs."

Turning, she stalked back into the forest.

Half an hour later, Sokka returned to the group's company and delivered an armful of tinder to his sister, who—with a helpful flash of flame from Aang—set about starting dinner. Soon the scent of freshly-grilled meat and vegetables colored the campsite complacent. Snatching the first completed skewer, Sokka trotted over to where the resident Earthbender was tossing stones into the river.

"Here." He provided her the kebab.

She took it and savaged it quietly, offering up only a grunt as Sokka settled beside her. For a few moments they listened to the crickets and the swish of the reeds—or Sokka listened, anyway.

"Thanks," he murmured at last.

Sucking her fingertips, Toph shrugged. "Eh."

"I'd follow you too, you know," he blurted. He glanced at her sidelong. She fell motionless, her middle finger stuck between her lips, her pinky flared out in a delicate arc painted red by the sunset's final rays. "If—if you ever. Uhm. What I mean is, if it ever, kinda, uh. Worked out that way."

Toph's breath shuddered out in a sigh. Her cheeks were red too, or maybe it was just the light. Sokka squinted, trying to decide which it was, but then she smacked her lips and said, "Don't be stupid, Snoozles. Where could I lead you? I'm _blind_."


	32. Rumble

**Commentary: **Happy Tokka Week! To celebrate, I'll be posting an entry each day. This is the first prompt.

**Words: **2661

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**Word FORTY-TWO: Rumble**

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"Feed me," said Toph.

Sokka glanced irritably over at his best friend. "I'm busy," he replied, giving the edge of his boomerang a particularly sharp grind against the whetstone. A spark leapt from the honed blade and danced over his lap before dissolving, a small black smudge left in its wake. "Get dinner yourself."

"Hey." Toph sat up. There were leaves in her hair. Because it was autumn now the ground was littered with them, and Toph's current crown was a yellow wonder of weeping elm. "I found the hiding place." She gestured to the cave in which they were now resting. "I covered our tracks. I even dug the damn _latrine_, so don't try to tell me you're too _busy _to throw together a simple soup or something—"

"I," reiterated Sokka, "_am _too busy. So either suck it up and wait until I'm finished with this or"—and he jabbed the boomerang in her direction—"get dinner yourself."

Toph scowled at him. Her hands flattened over her thighs, smoothing the rough fabric there. "What's the matter with you?" she demanded. Her brows rose. "Are you still upset because that archer shot you in the ass?"

"Leg," grated the tribesman darkly. "He shot me in the _leg_."

Lips pursed and feet pressed flush to the cave's floor, Toph considered. A crinkled leaf fell from the seam of her hair tie and fluttered to the stone between them. She resolved, "You are _definitely _still upset because that archer shot you in the ass."

Dropping his boomerang with a clatter, Sokka jerked upright. He fumbled furiously with the tie of his pants. Toph blinked, head cocked, milky gaze curious.

"Whatcha doing?" she ventured.

"Give me your hand," insisted Sokka. Previously given no reason to disobey the request, the Earthbender shrugged and extended the limb. She stiffened as the tribesman seized it and forced it against taut flesh. Toph's nails scuttered. "Do you feel that?" he hissed. "Do you know what that is?"

"Uhm," said Toph. Her breath blew free in a shudder. Vines of pink crept up her cheeks and put out flowers there, the blooms bright even in the cave's gloom. "Uhm," she repeated again, and licked her lips. Slowly she hedged, "Sokka? Am I… am I touching your ass?" Her fingers flared the tiniest bit—squeezed too, a faint pressure.

"It's my _thigh_!" whined Sokka. "My THIGH! _Spirits_! He shot me in the _thigh_!" Sulkily he released Toph's wrist and hauled his breeches back up. He missed the way his best friend's hand hovered midair a moment, the motion wholly despondent. "It's not fair," he continued. "We were supposed to meet up with Aang and Katara today at the province crossroads. There was gonna be revelry. _Meat by the mound. _But noooo," he grumbled, disgusted. He took a ginger seat back on the cave's floor. "What did we get instead? A rebel ambush and an arrow—"

"In the ass," Toph finished cheerily. Sokka scowled at her and she blinked, then grinned and corrected, "Oh, my bad. Ahem." She executed a little bow and flicked her fingers at him in a flourish. "_Your _ass."

Gritting his teeth, Sokka picked up his boomerang, set it on the whetstone, and pushed it hard against the sharpener's grain. _Skree_! Noting in a malicious kind of satisfaction Toph's faint wince, the tribesman muttered, "Just leave me alone a while, okay?"

"Fine, pricklepuss," granted the Earthbender. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I'll be over here whenever you're finished, you know, dealing with your menstrual cramps and boy-crazy hormones."

Oblivious to the withering look Sokka gifted her, Toph took up residence as promised along the cave's far wall. For a while she listened to the melancholy _plip-plip-ploop _of moisture off the cavern's stalactites. Next she tapped her feet along the wall's lowermost curve and mapped how far their small passageway wound back into the mountain. Answer: forever and ever, amen. She amused herself another snatch of time flicking pebbles back into the abyss. Finally she settled on picking her toes, trying—with limited success—to ignore the gnawing pang in the pit of her belly.

At last a thunderous rumble stirred in the depths of her gut. It was loud enough to earn an echo. "Okay," she insisted. She rocked aright and aimed her face plaintively in her companion's direction. "Sokka, c'mon, _please_—"

"Still busy here!"

Toph threw up her hands. "How sharp can the damn boomerang possibly get? Here—gimme that!" Crawling forward, she seized the weapon from Sokka's startled grasp and swiped at the side of his head with it. She succeeded in scraping off a small bit of skin and goodly amount of hair too. "See?" she persisted, holding up a fistful of the shorn brown locks. "It's _fine_! Now will you _please _go get us some food? I am _starving _here—"

"You could've just taken off my ear!" yelped Sokka. He recaptured his boomerang and hugged it protectively to his chest.

"Oh for—it's _metal_, Meathead. And we're _surrounded _by, gee golly _gosh_, miles of stone! I think I know where your ears are!"

"You—" Sokka spluttered. "You don't know the _intricacies _of wielding a weapon like this one!"

"Intricacies?" scoffed the other teenager. "_Intricacies_? It's a sharp _stick_. A sharp _crooked _stick."

A polar tension settled over the cave. "A sharp crooked stick, huh?" Sokka muttered at length. Before Toph could reply, he tucked the boomerang into its sheath, scooched back against the curve of the cave's wall, and supplied, "Fine. If that's all it is, let's see you go get your own freaking dinner without it." He motioned to their hideaway's entrance, a circle of fading sunlight now. "How about that? Does that sound _intricate _enough for you?"

Toph's head swiveled slowly toward the cave's mouth. "How am I supposed to get dinner? I don't know what's good—"

"Guess."

"—and I can't tell whether things are ripe or not; I mean, I can't _see_—"

"Sounds like a personal problem," Sokka snapped.

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew that instantly, but pride kept any apology festering and voiceless in the back of his throat. Without a word Toph climbed to her feet. She dusted off her breeches and stepped to the cave's fore. Her silhouette's hand was a quivering fist, Sokka noticed, and when she spoke her voice had a hitch in it. "You know what's a personal problem?" the Earthbender asked quietly. "I'm willing to dig a hole for you to shit in, and yet you can't even bother to move your sorry arrow-studded ass to find me something passable to eat."

She disappeared out into the evening's orange haze.

Anger and guilt warred in Sokka. Because he wasn't at heart a bad person, much less a bad friend, the latter won out and he stood. He limped to the cave's entrance. "Toph," he called as loudly as he dared. He squinted into the surrounding trees. Each looked the same as the next. "Toph, c'mon, I'm sorry—" The words were muted, low in the gathering dusk and lost to birdsong. Toph was gone besides. "Damnit. Smooth move, Sokka," the tribesman rebuked himself, and withdrew into the cave to wait out his friend's return.

An hour passed. The sunset was crimson in the clouds first, then purple. That purple gave way to the navy cape of night and the stars came out in its bower, their arrival serenaded by the forest's chorus of badgerfrogs and the slow, seeping whine of the season's last mosquitoes. Sokka fidgeted, huddled at the cave's entrance. The shadows of the wood stretched out in all directions; twigs cracked. Bushes rustled. _Whoo-fuh-ooht_, reprimanded a catowl, and took wing into the horizon, where the moon was making its gradual swollen appearance.

Two hours. Two and a half. Sokka's fidgeting turned into rocking. He clamped his arms about his knees, his chin forced down hard into the shelf said knees made. Guilt was his blood now, a sea of it pulsing through him, and with every breath he felt a little less like the man who had helped the Avatar save the world and a little more like that world's biggest buttmonkey. "Who teases a blind chick about being blind anyway?" he muttered to himself, and socked his head into the cave wall for good measure. "Geez, Sokka, you _dipshit_. Who teases a blind chick for being blind when that chick is your best friend in the whole univer—"

A footstep. Sokka lurched so violently at the sound of it that the little tower of pebbles he'd been building without really noticing toppled over in fragments across the stone floor, _skk-ttt-ritta-skkt. _ He spilled out into the moonlight and stood still just shy of the trees, statuesque, breath held. Had it been his imagination? Had the noise simply been another of the night's creeping whispers?

No. There was a second footstep, a third, a fourth, and then a harsh crackle of leaves as someone presumably fell in them. Sokka had already started toward the ruckus when a familiar voice issued from somewhere off to his left, cloaked by trees and darkness, "Hey. Snoozles. Uh." More crackling. "Help me up," Toph insisted. She made a hoarse hiccupping sound next. The tribesman followed it to a small thicket.

In a nest of dead leaves and thorns sat the Earthbender, her head thrown back in the cradle between her shoulders, her elbows resting atop her knees. "Toph?" he chanced. He knelt at her side and took her arm. It shook violently in his grasp, stilled, and spasmed again not seconds later. "Toph?" he asked again. "What's wrong? What happened?"

She leered at him. The corner of her mouth twitched upright, revealing teeth slimy and slick with saliva; her eye, the one that was open, caught the moonlight and held it. She kept the other eye squinched shut as she said, "I." Her head nodded. "I got my own dinner. Without your stupid boomerang." A second time her head drooped, wobbled upright, and sank in the opposite direction. She was sweating profusely, her neck glazed in wetness, her clothes sticking to her in hills and rumpled valleys. "It was delicious," she determined, and finished, "but I think it wasn't. Wasn't, uh. The right. Thing." She added, "To eat."

It wasn't just Toph's arm shaking, Sokka understood suddenly. It was all of her, shivering and rattling and practically vibrating in place. He slid his hand down her arm to clutch at her fingers. Hot and dry, they scratched at his thumb and he asked, "What did you eat? What was it?"

"You know!" she cried, and the cry dissolved into a hiccup, and that hiccup into a sound suspiciously like a sob. "Those little—those little _things_, yeah, that Katara peels away from moss and puts in _soup _and they're, like, gnawtastic and chewy and Sokka, Sokka my head is just, it's funny and—"

"You ate mushrooms," said Sokka, woodenly. It wasn't quite a question.

"Mush. Mush_rooms_," crooned Toph, and burst into tears. Giggling through the fog of moisture, she fisted her hands in the sea of leaves surrounding them and confessed, throwing palmfuls of the crunchy dead things high like confetti, "I—I am so, you have no idea, just—so, so _into _this and it took me forever to get back here, for-freaking-_ever _and something is. " She hiccupped, and went on, "Wrong with me. Something is really, really wrong with me. Am I—" She groped at her face with a hand covered in little dark crusty leaf-triangles. She slumped and her jaw unhinged, and she exhaled weakly and whispered, "Am I crying? Oh shit. Shit, I am. Shit," she revisited, "Sokka, don't look at me."

"Not looking," Sokka promised. He hooked his hands beneath her arms and hauled her upright. She was at once heavier than she looked and lighter than he'd been expecting. "C'mon," encouraged the tribesman. "Let's get inside." One step forward. Two. She followed or tried, mostly stumbling, and leaves fell down around them in a shower.

"Sokka," she gasped when they were within an arm's stretch of the cave's entrance. "Sokka, stop."

She'd said his names more times in the past ten minutes than she had in the past ten months, and for mainly that reason he obediently halted and blinked down at her in the moonlight. Her face was pinched, her eyes shut. "Yeah?" he nudged.

"I am," she declared, holding up a finger, "not fond of the color purple." She paused. Swayed. "Nope," she cemented.

"It's not that great," Sokka agreed, and dragged her the last few steps into the cave. A minor wrestling match later found Toph on a pallet—his—and shivering, her arms tucked tight to her torso, her eyes roving sightlessly in all directions. As she alternately sniffled and giggled into his pillow, he thumbed at the buttons on her tunic and urged, "Hey, help me here. You're covered in thorns. Let's, uh, you know. Get these off."

A little more coaxing saw Toph stripped down to her underthings. Picking bits of broken bramble from her hair, Sokka glanced sidelong and noticed one of the pockets on the Earthbender's shed top leaking red. Carefully he fished his hand into that pocket and came up with the squashed remnants of what might have been berries in another life.

"Toph," he hedged. "These things in your pocket. Why—"

"They're not for you, jerk," she mumbled immediately. "They're for Sokka. He likes them. They're his favorite. Stop pulling my hair. Uh. Actually," she decided, "you can keep doing that. I kinda." A last hiccup. "I kinda dig it."

She sank abruptly back against him, snoring so loudly the walls of the cave shook, eyes wide open and crippled pupils the size of currency. Clutching at her limp shoulders, Sokka bit his cheek until both tears threatened and the moon sank its sickle past midnight.

The next morning around an hour after dawn, Toph stirred and sat up in Sokka's rumpled bedroll. She was, by all appearances, back to normal. Smearing a hand down her face, she observed simply, "Hurg."

"Toph?" came the query. Crouched nearby, Sokka smiled hopefully and asked, "How're you feeling?"

"Bleeeh," Toph opined. She rested a ginger hand on her stomach. It gurgled.

"Hey! Sounds like you're hungry," remarked Sokka. "And that's good because I, uh—well, I'm really, _really _sorry and I… I didn't mean to insult you or, eheh, actually I _did_, but I'm still sorry and I, see, I mean! I mean, you don't see and uh, here." Thrusting a bowl into the Earthbender's startled hands, he concluded, "I made you soup."

_Krrk_. Toph's fingers clenched around the bowl. She stared unblinkingly down into the soup's silted depths.

"I was upset," Sokka continued, "because of getting shot in the ass and—yeah," he agreed, as her head twitched toward him, "you were right, I _did _get shot in the ass. Not the thigh. And I was upset, like I said, but that's no excuse for saying what I said and I'm just." He took a breath. "I'm sorry, okay? Please," he tacked on gracelessly, "I am. And I didn't mean for you to get high on mushrooms and I especially didn't mean to make you think you, uh, have any sort of problem and I will totally feed you whatever you want _whenever _you want, I promise—"

She was smiling at him. It was a slow, hangover kind of smile, but it was still a smile, and Sokka was marveling over it when she opened her mouth and threw up on his feet.

"Apology accepted," she croaked a moment later. With a flick of her wrist she sent the bowl sailing off toward the cave's entrance. Soup sprayed everywhere. "Now," she insisted, "stop being such a girl and make me some bacon."


	33. Addiction

**Commentary: **Herpderp, almost forgot to post this here! Here's my second entry for Tokka Week.

**Words: **2,119

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**Word FORTY-THREE: Addiction**

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_Stay away from there_, the badgermoles tell her in their velvet-nosed lexicon. Their whiskers brush over her face in the same manner her mother's hand strokes her hair at night, and Toph grins up into the embrace as her Earthbending teachers beg her, over and over, _Little one, stay away from there. It is dangerous, dangerous._

She listens to them at first. After all, Toph Bei Fong is the daughter of provincial nobility and has been schooled in the art of obedience since birth, not that her frequent rendezvouses with the badgermoles are any indication of that fact. For a while, she is content to heed their warnings, to take to heart their hard-clawed advice. She crawls with them through the tunnels and learns how to Bend the earth beneath her fingers: learns how to mold it, to break it, to throw it, to love it, and finally to _see _through it. It is because of this last thing, though, this gift of sight, that she is able to perceive the place her teachers fear and avoid, and it is also sight that coaxes her closer, closer, closer to that place. A faint glimpse of it is not enough for someone who has spent the majority of her short life in perpetual darkness.

To be fair, she makes her first visit to the place when it is empty and quiet and surely, she rationalizes, not dangerous at all. Slowly she walks along its borders, feels out its formations. It is a square of raised earth surrounded by what resemble widened staircases. Bits of paper crunch underfoot as she explores said "staircases." Dips and dents in the stone signify that hundreds—perhaps _thousands_—of footsteps have echoed here before Toph's, and with all the normal, healthy curiosity of a child she wonders why. What did the owners of those footsteps come to see?

She creeps onto the raised platform and meanders to its middle. She slams down a heel. Dust puffs and she knows that the earth here moves often, not because it wants to but because it is _made _to. Haphazard boulders stud the platform's edges; furrows linger, helter-skelter, and the imprints at the ends of the furrows are in the shapes of people.

Toph is young, but she is smart too. The connection clicks in her brain. This is an arena. Even better, this is an arena for Earthbenders.

Because she hails from a merchant family, Toph comes by her innate competitive streak honestly. If this is an arena for Earthbenders, she reasons, she should be welcome here. Morever, she should _play _here. Inviting herself back to the place every night, she utilizes the wide square space to practice techniques too devastating for the badgermole tunnels. She does not tell her teachers—she does not need to. They know. _Little one_, they remind her, _it is dangerous, dangerous_.

"How can it be dangerous?" she asks them. "It's for Earthbenders. I'm an Earthbender! I'm a _great _Earthbender!"

They do not deny her this claim. Maybe it is beyond the capacity of the badgermoles to understand or to argue—they do not talk like she talks. They listen and they move the earth, and in the shift of rocks and the grind of shale they whisper to Toph, _Little one, you will lose yourself. It is dangerous, dangerous._

Whether it is or isn't dangerous, Toph ventures back to the place again and again until, finally, she finds it full of people. Hovering in the shadows, her feet pressed flat to the floor, she listens to the screams and cheers and howls of her hometown's thrillseekers. Mostly, though, she watches what happens on the raised platform in the center of the arena. Her competitive streak widens to a gash: the Earthbenders there are good, but they are not like her. They are not great.

She decides suddenly that she will show them how great she is. Why not? As her father is fond of saying, others should know what they are missing.

She gleans the time of the next tournament from the crowd's excited chatter. The next fortnight she waits at the edge of that crowd as the competitors beat the brains out of each other, and when only one is left and the announcer calls, "Is there no one who will fight him?" a thin, piping voice rings out across the arena.

"I will!" Toph insists. In a blink she scrabbles up the side of the platform and stands, expectant, in the settling dust of the last fight. Her grin eats up her face. Her stance is perfect. A deafening silence nevertheless drops it dome over the arena, and Toph calls out a second time for good measure, "I WILL!"

It starts in ripples. Those ripples grow into waves, and those waves into an ocean, and then Toph is drowning, drowning in a sea of _laughter_. The ground shakes with the force of it. The ceiling of the arena quivers. So do Toph's hands, clenching into fists.

The announcer rebukes her. "You're just a little girl."

"I'm a great Earthbender," she replies.

"I won't fight a child." That's her would-be opponent, a man with more muscles than brain matter. He's picking his teeth with a splintered bit of rock.

"So don't," Toph suggests. To her it's the easiest thing in the world to grasp, but she spells out for the moron anyway, "Fight a great Earthbender instead." Just in case he can't make the connection himself, she beckons to him, tracing a line in the air from him back to her chest. "I'm right here."

There is more laughter: from the tooth-picking moron, from the announcer, from the crowd. Toph's blood boils hotter with every wheezing cackle or cracked giggle, and finally she slams down a foot and sends her would-be opponent sailing in a beautific arc across the arena and out of the ring. He lands somewhere near a vendor selling sausages. She is told later that he crawled home crying for his mother.

The laughter stops not at all like it started. It is gone immediately, akin to the spill of water from a turned tap. No one coughs. No one _breathes_. The announcer might as well be a wooden signpost. Shifting her feet apart and squaring her shoulders, Toph snarls to the frozen assembly, "_Well_? Who else wants some?"

It is the announcer who breaks the sweltering silence. His knees pop like pistons as he bends down to Toph's level, and hoarsely he murmurs, "It appears you have stolen the show." He swallows. _Ung-urk! _"Who are you?" comes the whisper.

Toph hesitates. Gaoling has two secrets: tournaments like this one and the sole heiress of the Bei Fong family, a little blind girl who has—to the best of her parents' knowledge—never left the sprawling estate at the edge of town. One of those secrets isn't so much a secret: the gaping crowd on every side of the raised platform says that much.

Toph Bei Fong, however, might as well not exist.

On one hand it's insulting and hurtful that Toph's parents insist on hiding her from the public, because there is nothing wrong with their daughter, not really, and she has dreamed for years of walking with her mother and father through the town square, of going to Gaoling's market and smelling the smells and hearing the sounds. On the other hand, though, there are advantages to the Bei Fongs having no child. She is unrecognizable now in a sea of her peers. If she plays her cards right, no one will go running back to her parents to tattle on her whereabouts, and by rote her parents will continue—however unwittingly—to allow her this one small freedom.

But she has to tell the announcer _something_.

On her cheeks his breath tickles and she knows he's looking at her, looking at her and trying to reconcile how a little girl can be, well, a little girl and a great Earthbender at the same time.

"Blind," she mutters.

She feels him straighten. "Blind?" he repeats doubtfully.

Oops! But it's okay—Toph's not just a great Earthbender. She can improvise too! His words echo in her head: _It appears you have stolen the show_. "Blind Bandit," she provides, and drops her elbow against his hip. She leans there with all the nonchalance of the most experienced and grizzled fighters. Lifting a finger, she circles it once in the air, a _you-may-bow-now _motion, and next proceeds to shove its tip up a nostril.

_Aaaaah_, the crowd sighs.

In a slow gust of breath, the announcer requests, "May I take your arm?" His voice practically vibrates with reluctant respect, and because of that Toph sticks out the desired limb. In the next second it has been clasped and thrust high. "THE BLIND BANDIT!" roars the announcer. "YOUR NEW RUMBLE CHAMPION!"

Ripples, waves, an ocean again: but this time of cheering. Adulation. Reverence. A chant starts somewhere in the back of the crowd and roils forward, a scream in the mouth of every man watching: "BANDIT! BANDIT! BANDIT! BANDIT!"

For the first time in her life, Toph finds her skin awash in gooseflesh. She tips her head to the boom of worship; she sinks under its cape, too stupefied to recognize a siren song, too proud to see she is being suckered.

The badgermoles have taught a blind person to see, but unfortunately they cannot correct a child's every woe. Their warning falls on deaf ears, a whisper wilting forgotten in the depths of Toph's mind: _Little one, you will lose yourself._

And Toph is lost.

From that moment and for two whole years afterward, the arena is the only place she is happy. She lives for the crowd's roar and craves the slow prickle of sweat between her shoulderblades. Bit by bit the Bei Fong in her diminishes, and she forgets that she was once a little girl and not always a great Earthbender. On the eve of Earth Rumble VI, she is no longer Toph, not really. She is the Blind Bandit. She is the champion. She is—

—knocked out of the ring by a prissy little ballerina dude!

The rest of the story is the stuff of legend. Prissy little ballerina dude turns out to be the Avatar. The Avatar needs an Earthbending teacher. Toph Bei Fong is a great Earthbender. Two pieces of a puzzle fit together: the world is saved. Hurray!

Legends, funnily enough, will not recall the Blind Bandit. Legends will mention instead Toph Bei Fong. And legends will not explain the reason behind this, but here is why: on the night of Earth Rumble VI, Toph does not just meet—and have her ass handed to her by—the Avatar. She also meets—and causes to faint dead away—a man called Sokka.

Sokka appears initially to be the quintessential rabid fanboy. He lauds her Earthbending talent, showers her with praise, and dubs her the epitome of awesome. At the sight of her epic sweet moves it is not beneath him to swoon.

But Sokka is apparently not just impressed with the Blind Bandit or, as the Avatar calls her, Sifu Toph. He is the first person to notice her dry wit, to laugh at her jokes, and to ask her opinion on a crucial matter (she tells him the bag looks stupid, and he is hurt until he realizes she can't actually _see _the damn thing). He is the first person to simultaneously shield her from harm and shriek for her aid. He is the first person to really, truly recognize that _Toph Bei Fong _is a _great Earthbender_, two halves of a whole, one just as important as the other. He is the first person to appreciate _all _of her, he is the first person to be her friend, and it is ultimately because of Sokka that Toph is weaned away from the notion that happiness comes at the price of pleasing the crowd.

With Sokka, Toph is not lost.

But, "OW!" he complains as her fist rockets into his arm. Rubbing the grievously injured limb, he scowls over at her and demands, "What was that for?"

"It's the way I show love," Toph admits. Sokka rolls his eyes.

"Oh, really? In that case, consider me won," he mutters. His arm has already begun to bruise. Despite this he keeps close to her, and now and again their elbows rasp together in the small separation between them. No roar of the crowd is necessary: each faint brush makes Toph's skin stipple into gooseflesh.

It's true, indeed: with Sokka, Toph is not lost.

With Sokka, Toph is exactly where she belongs.


	34. Lick

**Commentary: **Third entry. =) Written for the prompt _Plan of Attack_.

**Words: **2,801

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**Word FORTY-FOUR: Lick**

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"It's simple," Toph urged. "I say we just go right for his nuts."

"See, you're too impatient. And too vicious," disagreed Sokka, granting his friend a wince. Tightening his hand over her wrist, he pulled her a little closer. Their hips jostled; the rough fabric of her breeches rasped over his arm and he insisted, clutching at the doorjamb, "Subterfuge. _Cunning_. Those are imperative here. _We need those things, Toph_."

"We need a good ol' heaping helping of boring," sighed the smaller teenager. With her free hand she scratched idly at her ankle.

"Ssh!" He swatted at her skittering fingers. "Stop that! Your fidgeting's gonna alert the enemy!"

"I'm itchy, Snoozles! The bugs here think I'm a buffet!"

"Well," he hissed, "stop making your blood taste so delicious. The enemy—"

"Is a pregnant Fire Lady. Who is nowhere near this wing of the palace that I can see—I mean, she's scary, yeah, but she doesn't fly, right? Because if she can fly, we are so screwed."

"…it would be really awesome and equally terrifying if she flew." At Toph's somewhat misaimed glare, Sokka corrected, "But no. No, she doesn't fly."

"Excellent! So, like I said"—and Toph rose, seizing Sokka by the ear to drag him forcibly into the kitchen; his narrow buttocks bumped and bucked across the tiled floor—"we should go right for Zuko's nuts." Four steps later she stopped and sucked in a shuddering breath, cheeks flushed in reverence. Her tongue darted out and wet her lips; her hand fell weakly to Sokka's shoulder and clenched there, and she husked, "Oh. Oh man. There they are. Look at them, Sokka," she instructed next. "Look at them and tell me how beautiful they are." Her knees wobbled, gave out. Turning slightly, she burrowed her face into his shoulder and affected a swoon.

Sokka looked at the trays arranged on the Fire Nation palace's granite kitchen countertop. One of said trays—in fact, the nearest one—sported an array of glistening nodules bedecked first in a honeyed glaze and next in a faint powdery film of fine sugar. They had been baked not long ago and their aroma wafted, beguiling, across the kitchen to where he and Toph were standing. Standing spellbound. Standing in _awe_.

"Candied pecans, dude," Sokka sighed. He curled an arm around Toph and mimicked her swoon, and because of it she grunted and wedged an elbow into his ribs. "Dude," he revisited, "yeah. Toph, I wish you could see them. Because they really are beautiful. They are just, like, the epitome of glorious and—"

Toph lunged. She seized twin handfuls of the fresh confection and thrust one into her eager mouth, biting down with such fervency that little bits of pecan sprayed everywhere. "Aahng," she moaned, chewing rapidly now. "Aah. Oh—oh Spirits, Sokka, they're so good—" Back toward him her other hand swept, fingers laden with coin-sized treats. "Take them," she insisted. "Take them and understand the true definition of awesome. Your world is small and meaningless until these puppies caress your tongue."

"I'm kinda uncomfortable with you using words like caress," Sokka admitted, but he scraped a few of the sticky nuts from her palm and set about nibbling them anyway. They were good—downright delectable after a day of diplomatic meetings and a dinner of vegetarian dishes ("The downside of traveling with the Avatar," Toph had said, and next she'd made vomit noises into her drinking glass). But they were, Sokka realized after the first few ravenous bites, only nuts, and a quick glance aloft revealed that the Fire Lord's kitchen stretched on forever in what looked like every direction. "Toph," Sokka nudged his best friend. "Toph, stop eating those."

"Mmphfrgrfff?" She tipped her head up toward him. Her feet contracted on the tiled floor—it was stone in its own right; she could still see him fine, he thought—and she mumbled, spewing still more of the pecans down the front of her shirt, "What? Why?"

"Tap those frisky toes of yours and check out this kitchen," he suggested. "It's _massive_."

Working on her current mouthful of pecans, Toph obeyed. The tiny white nubs of her toes pressed and curled and her dead eyes widened, saucers of milk in her face. "Nice digs," she acknowledged. "But why should I stop eating these nuggets of crunchy scrumptiousness, huh? You'd better have some good rationale—"

"Oh but I do," Sokka assured her. "This," he began, "this fantastic kitchen, Toph, think about it—expansive and unending in its options, everflowing in its bounty—"

"As everflowing as your mindless crap? Because I'm going to take another bite now."

Toph made to do just that. Sokka risked losing a finger and caught her by the wrist, hauling her hand away from her face and shaking free the pecans in it. They fell to the tiles, scattered across those pristine squares like bombs. The tribesman put forward, "Seriously. Toph. Come on. Think about how big this kitchen is. Think about how the nuts were right by the door. Think about"—and he lowered his voice to a whisper, because it just seemed appropriate for the situation—"what else could be waiting on the countertops of this giant veritable freaking pantry, you know?"

For a moment they were both quiet, Sokka holding his breath and Toph's wrist flexing gently, softly under his fingers, the tendons slipping a little, the flutter of her pulse beneath her skin oddly tenuous for someone who could tear up mountains. But then she grinned, all the teeth in her skull bared in a supplicant salute to his astounding idea—or at least Sokka liked to think so.

"There could be," she realized, "culinary _treasures_in here."

"Yes!" Sokka released Toph so he could fistpump the air next to her head. She didn't even bother blinking. "Yes," he repeated. "Gustatory delights. Gastronomic wonders. Food so fine—"

"Shut up and let's get our hunt on, shall we?" Toph interjected.

They totally proceeded to get their hunt on.

Not that it was a particularly challenging endeavor. The kitchen's collection of chambers were deserted, the cooks and chefs having retired for the evening not even an hour prior. Upon racks and countertops innumerable trays of cooling desserts and breakfast meals awaited the attention of the palace's midnight staff. Said trays received the attention of Toph and Sokka instead, who crept giggling and snorting down through the unending maze of dark, sweet-smelling rooms. Their fingers wandered, snatching a croissant here, nipping a trifle there.

It was Sokka, though, who discovered the muffins.

"Hey, come look at these," he suggested to his burglary companion in a tone only just above a whisper.

"Yeah, about that."

"Sorry." Reaching down in the frail darkness to take Toph's hand, he guided it over the tray he was currently examining. "Feel that?" coaxed the tribesman. "They're still warm."

Toph stepped closer to both he and the tray, lowering her face close to the latter. She inhaled and informed Sokka, voice thick, "Wow. Snoozles, they've got blueberries in them."

Toph's blindness and the general lack of light in the room didn't stop the pair from exchanging a slow, oh hell _yes _look.

Delicately plucking free and palming one of the fresh muffins, Sokka offered it to Toph in a flourish and asserted, "For you, Madam Bandit. A tribute to your most _excellent_idea of raiding the Fire Lord's plentiful larders."

"Damn straight," said Toph. Filching the treat, she nevertheless groped for another muffin and presented it on the tips of her fingers. "And for you, Sir Sokka," she announced. "A token to express my joy that you were so willing to accompany me on this most supreme and auspicious venture." After Sokka had taken his award, Toph held her own high and determined, "Cheers!"

They clinked muffins and each devoured them in a matter of seconds. It wasn't long before the tray was completely empty, all crumbs licked from fingers and every spot of blueberry juice sucked from the creases of stiffened thumbs. Somewhere in the palace a gong called the priests to worship. A skillet nearby creaked on its hook; slender moonlight slanted in through a window above the ovens and lacquered the tiles like fingernails.

Settled back to back with Toph beneath a cupboard, his head nodding and his belly straining at the seams of his pants, Sokka wondered, "Do you think there's anything else in here worth gnawing on? Or were those muffins just, I dunno, the cream of the crop?" He paused to belch and finished, "Not like that's a bad thing, don't misunderstand me."

Toph's reply was dubious. "Those are gonna be hard to beat. Plus"—and she sounded reluctant to admit it—"I'm not sure I'm still hungry at all." She drummed her fingers over the tight swell of her stomach.

Leaning his head back against Toph's, Sokka nodded. The cool silk of her hair trickled over his ear, down the back of his neck. Suppressing a shiver, he agreed sagely, "Food coma, Toph. Absolute food coma. That's what this is."

Toph pretended to snore, then chuckled. They rested a while thus, one supporting the other. Wrists brushed: Toph's pulse was still a butterwasp's flutter, Sokka noted. He started to ask her about it and even got so far as opening his mouth, but ultimately decided, eh, what was the use—she'd just snap something derisive at him anyway, and the companionable quiet was nice.

"This is nice," she voiced, echoing his thoughts. He made no reply but really, that was okay. They were cool. They were downright chill, content in the low creaks and rustles of the kitchen, and Sokka might have eventually fallen asleep against the pillar of his best friend had she not murmured at last, thoughtful, "I smell something interesting."

The statement captured just enough of Sokka's attention to warrant him sitting up a smidgen. "Interesting? Interesting how?"

Against his spine her shoulders rose and fell too, a perfect shrug. "I dunno. It's like…" She considered. Her nails tapped the tiles, _ptta-skit-ptta_, and she resumed finally, "It's like flowers and food together."

"Sounds gross."

Another shrug. "It doesn't smell bad to me." With a low groan and a swish of breeches, Toph climbed to her feet. Her hand fell to the crown of Sokka's head in the silver sweep of the moonlight, thumb pressed light to his ear, index and ring fingers draped down nearby his eyebrows. "One last exploratory adventure?" she suggested. "Before we call it a night?"

Tipping his face up into the crease of the Earthbender's palm, Sokka smiled. "Sure! Why not? I mean, if you wanna be my Shirshu, I'll definitely be your rider."

"My what now?"

"…your, uh, faithful and steadfast cohort."

"Theeeere we go. C'mon then, cohort. I'm getting sleepy."

She lifted her hand away from his head and let it hang close by instead. Sokka took the proffered limb and, after heaving himself aright, encouraged Toph to, "Lead the way, O Seeker of the Odiferous Object."

Ever deeper into the kitchen they wandered, padding quietly past ovens banked for the evening, stacks of dishes washed and set in brackets to dry. They idled around a mountain of flour; they paused to admire a similar sugar bag pyramid. "Lots of food for lots of people," whistled Toph, and then she sniffed and swiveled slowly toward a doorway nearly hidden behind heaping basketfuls of freshly shucked corn. "There," she indicated, gesturing to that doorway. Shadows and moonlight wrapped a spiral tattoo over her arm. "It's in there. Flowers and… and fruit." With a final inquisitive huff, she nodded and determined, "Definitely fruit."

The hair on the back of Sokka's neck prickled in anticipation. "It's probably just a vase full of cuttings and a loaf of bread or something," he mumbled, but secretly he hoped it was an exotic delicacy only ever concocted deep within the bowels of the Fire Nation palace. A special recipe. An exclusive luxury.

"Yeah," Toph agreed. In her voice he heard the same hopefulness he himself possessed, and together they crossed the last few meters to the doorway. As a single investigative entity they passed through it.

The room revealed beyond was nothing spectacular. Small and scantily furnished, it sported five things: a broom closet, its door slightly ajar; a window through which moonlight gushed in a thick pewter torrent; a table; a chair, tucked beneath the aforementioned table; a fruit tart adorned with rose petals, settled on a plate in the absolute center of both that table and the window's river of lunar radiance.

Its scent—the fruit tart's, not the table's—was intoxicating. Despite that he had only minutes before devoured eight whole muffins, Sokka felt saliva coat his tongue and slick his teeth. Sucking at the wet, he managed, "Uh."

Toph's stomach snarled in agreement.

He glanced down at her in time to see her flicker back through the doorway. Briefly the sounds of her footsteps _spak-spak_'ed away, but they looped back again and she reappeared around the jamb, each hand full of something sharp and shining.

Passing Sokka a fork, she decreed, "That thing smells amazing and we will eat it. We will eat it _now_, Sokka." She jabbed the tines of the fork she'd kept for herself into the meat of his bicep. Maybe she thought he was going to argue.

"Yea verily and so it is writ, hallelujah puh-puh-_puhRAISE_ the Spirits, O we will taketh of the communion that is the assuredly holy fruit tart before us," Sokka proclaimed.

"Preach it, brother." Stepping forward and brandishing high her fork like a trident, the Earthbender announced, "I get the first bite," and proceeded to ravish the virgin delight settled so brazenly on the table before her.

Sokka helped.

When it was done, the nefarious deed, and their passions spent too, the pair slumped sideways against the table. Toph greedily sucked at the buttercream smeared across her knuckles. For his part, Sokka took up a rose petal and gave it a curious gnaw. It wasn't really his style, so he flicked it away and glanced over at his best friend.

"Oh, hey," he observed, "here. Let me—see, you've got a little, you know, cream—"

He leaned over and, after licking the digit, used his thumb to smooth away the splash of white from her cheek's lowermost curve. In the wake of his touch and under the moonlight's haze her skin flushed, heated. Before he could draw away entirely, Toph reached up to curl her fingers about his wrist. Her nails scratched at the skin there; her palm's calluses rasped the joint's hinge. With a tug she guided him back to her—he watched her mouth the air, tentative, before her lips closed over his thumb and she lapped at it, eyes hooded. Her teeth scraped the digit's pad; her tongue whispered over his nail's crescent—

"Toph," he said hoarsely, helplessly. Hungrily. Not for food this time, though, no _sir_. "Toph. What—"

Her gaze flicked up to him and away again, obliviously lighting on a spot somewhere near his shoulder. Shifting her attention from his thumb, she traced her lips up the line of his palm to his wrist and kissed that. Kissed. Yea freaking verily, _kissed_. "You," she answered, struggling. Her throat worked. "Uhm. You—you taste good."

"I'll just bet he does," said a voice from the broom closet.

Sokka bit back a scream. Toph convulsed. Both jerked around to stare at the unassuming alcove, where a very pregnant and very smug-looking—if it was possible—Fire Lady stood staring placidly back at them. Now that the broom closet's door was open all the way, Sokka could make out the vague outline of a staircase beyond Mai's hip. A wooden staircase.

"Er," Sokka offered.

"Eheh," corresponded Toph.

"I knew it," Mai deadpanned. She glided into the room, too dignified even at six months along to waddle. Her dark eyes crinkled faintly at their corners and she exulted again, or what passed for exulting from a woman with all the emotional availability of a statue, "I just knew you two were—"

She stopped. Her jaw twitched; her nostrils flared. Her gaze dropped. Sokka chanced a peek down and saw that Mai was looking at the incriminating dessert plate between he and Toph, bare but for a few desolate crumbs.

"Did you," asked the Fire Lady delicately, "eat my fruit tart?"

Four hours later, when Zuko had finally finished freeing their knife-pinned forms from the wall (Sokka) and table (Toph), the scarred monarch demanded, "What lesson did you two learn tonight?"

The Earthbender and her faithful, steadfast cohort exchanged a glance. Sorta.

Together they answered, "Stop at muffins."

Sokka added, "Yea verily."


	35. Mother

**Commentary: **Fourth entry for Tokka Week! Whoooo yeah!

**Words: **2,371

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**Word FORTY-FIVE: Mother**

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_mother_, v. – to nurture, protect, mind, or guard

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A glorious summer morning garnished the land green. Cicadas whined. Nearby the footpath the weeds bobbed and swayed; the breeze stirred the surrounding forest's canopy into eddies and birdsong sifted down too, sweetly staccato. The badgerfrogs contributed a resplendent chorus. A shimmering haze of heat hovered at ankle height over the footpath, mimicking pools of water in the distance, casting up sharp the sun's relentless glare. The persistent _drippa-drippa-dreep _of a robinjay swept high and was almost, in concert with the remainder of the province's symphony, loud enough to muffle the sound of Sokka puking his guts out.

Almost.

"Uhm, wow," observed Toph from several paces distant, her toes curled hesitatingly down over the footpath's edge. Raking her bangs back from her face, she edged a mite closer to where Sokka was crouched and ventured, "Was it the breakfast or—"

Sokka heaved anew, decorating a sacred spot in the weeds with the remnants of the aforementioned breakfast and an array of horrible stomach juices. Toph winced. When the tribesman had finished and fallen to quivering and gasping, she stepped carefully over to him and tapped his shoulder with two fingers.

Sokka looked over that shoulder. Toph's canteen swung midair, sunlight aglimmer along its curve. "Take it," she advised. "I know you forgot to fill yours earlier and you're gonna want to wash your mouth out now."

"Thanks," Sokka managed. He seized weakly at the canteen. After rinsing, spitting, and splashing a little water on his face for good measure he offered it back.

Toph held up both hands, palms out. "Yeah, you'd better hang on to that."

"Right. Sorry." Staggering to his feet, Sokka sloshed a goodly bit of the canteen's contents down the front of his shirt and grated, "Oh damn. Oops. Uhm. Toph?" Clutching his fingers hard about the lump of cool metal, he took one step, two, and proceeded to sit down again. The slap of his buttocks against the footpath yielded a sizable puff of dust. "I think"—he held up the canteen like a talisman—"yeah. I think I'm sorta sick."

"I think you are miraculously correct. Here, gimme that. You're gonna spill the rest of it at the rate you're going," muttered the Earthbender. She snatched away the canteen and knelt before Sokka next, scowling hard at his collarbone. With one hard hand she felt for his face. Once she'd found it, she feathered her palm cautiously over his brow and noted, "You're about the temperature of a sunbaked rock there, Snoozles. That's not a good thing, is it?"

"I'm pretty sure it's sucktastic," he confirmed. Toph's palm was rough, firm; the callused ridge of it scratched at his cheek as he turned his head and hedged, "It's probably food poisoning. That fish last night tasted a little, well, off—"

"I told you not to put that in your mouth! It had two freaking heads!" Fuming now, Toph gave the tribesman's knee a healthy punch and snarled, "I swear, if you die because of a stupid sea creature—"

"River. River creature."

"…if you die because of an _aquatic animal_, a freaking contaminated _trout_—"

"Food poisoning isn't typically deadly," interjected Sokka. His stomach gurgled; his cheeks paled, not that they'd been particularly rosy in the first place. "Oh Spirits," he whispered. "I think I might throw up again."

"I think you might deserve to," snarled his best friend. As Sokka buckled over onto his knees and indeed resumed a miserable series of heaves, Toph thumped his ear and added, "That'll teach you to eat rotten mutant fish."

An indeterminate amount of time later, after Sokka was certain he'd barfed up his spleen and probably his liver too, Toph's arms snaked about the one of his. She hauled him upright. He wobbled and she thrust a shoulder into his ribs to steady him. "Easy," she demanded. "C'mon. Walk with me. Off the path—into the trees. The shade," she added. He stepped on her foot and she grimaced—but refused, he noted with surprise, to let him go. "Maybe with a little less mauling on your part, if you can manage it."

"My bad." Together they shuffled into the forest. Sokka wasn't able to go far before his knees went to water and his stomach informed him that oh, hello, it wanted him to vomit some more, please and thank you. As he hurled into the cluster of a plant he sincerely hoped wasn't poison ivy, Toph opened her canteen again and splashed the remainder of its contents down the back of his neck. It felt simultaneously amazing and absolutely humiliating.

"I've gotta say," she admitted in the space between the tribesman's piteous retches, "I've never seen anyone vomit so… _enthusiastically_."

"You've never seen anything," Sokka reminded her when he was able to subsist for more than fifteen seconds without throwing up.

Grinning, the Earthbender nodded. "You make a fair point. Are you finished now? Or are you gonna try to puke out your toenails next, because—"

"Toph, please." Sokka waved weakly. "Not now."

There was a pause. Leaves crunched next as Toph took a seat opposite him, elbows propped on her thighs, chin pillowed in her hands. She said nothing and neither did he, and shadows stippled and spat across the forest's mottled floor for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Innumerable times Sokka plumbed the depths of his being for the strength to move, to just stand, but his limbs felt like noodles, his skull like a fish bowl full of sand and jelly. His vision blurred, swam, took snorkeling lessons, and ultimately he dropped his head back against the nearest tree and closed his eyes.

More crunching. The briefest squint revealed Toph's face hovering nearby his own. He felt her breath on his cheek, mint-smelling, as she leaned in and said, "I might be blind, Snoozles, but even I can tell you look like complete shit."

"Aw," he dismissed, "be fair. _Complete _shit?"

"Utter," she agreed, and went on, "we're staying here for the day. I'll make camp." Despite his immediate sounds of protest, she tugged at the straps of the pack on his shoulders. "Let's get this off you."

"I'm fine! Really! I'm just a little, heh, wobbly—gimme a few minutes and I'll—"

Toph yanked. The pack came free. Shouldering it herself without the slightest hint of effort, the Earthbender informed him simply, "You'll rest. Don't"—and she gave his forehead a prod—"argue. It would be really bad if you got any sicker than you already are out here, Sokka. The nearest village is pretty far away and I'm not your sister. I can't mend your ouchies." She slung the pack sidelong and finished, "Let's try to head this off before it gets worse, okay?"

Opening his mouth to object, Sokka had to hastily close it again to keep from making a mess of himself. His stomach churned. In his temples his pulse throbbed, and at the corners of his eyes a red haze fluttered and roiled. "Yeah," he consented at last. "Yeah, that's a good idea."

"Atta boy! Now just chill there and I'll take care of stuff." Toph proceeded to turn away from him. The ground began to quiver faintly as she made a circle clear of mast amongst the surrounding trees, and it was to the sight of her back's green square moving and shifting that Sokka drifted into a dazed kind of drowse.

He came to again not because he was asked, but because he was being moved. Slanting open an eye, he discovered a sled of slate carrying him across Toph's clearing to where his bedroll had been unraveled and fluffed. She'd even remembered his pillow. "Toph," he managed. "Hey, that's really nice."

"Yeah, yeah, look at that, I'm not a complete terror all the time." The sled sloped upward and Sokka slid onto the bedroll, pretty as a picture. Crouching next to him, his companion flicked her fingers, dissolving the transportation. She said next, "Your shirt."

"What about it?"

"Take it off." At his confused blink, she rationalized, "You'll make it more disgusting than it already is sweating all over it while you sleep. I'm gonna rinse it and hang it up."

"There's a stream?"

She thumbed over her shoulder. "That way. Yep. Now." Slapping her knee, she insisted, "The shirt. Strip for me, baby."

Making a face, Sokka attempted to do so. His fettuccini arms only halfway obeyed the instructions his brain gave them, though, and ultimately Toph had to help him pry the garment free. "I can't believe you're going to do _laundry_," he admitted as he reclined on his bedroll, bare to the waist now. His stomach clenched in a cramp and he tacked on, gritting his teeth, "_My_ laundry."

"What can I say? It's a domestic phase. Next it'll be dresses and cooking." Toph cocked her head toward him, the play of sunlight over the dark mass like ripples on water. "You're sick," she stated briskly, and continued in a kinder, quieter voice, "so sleep, Snoozles. You're good at that."

Sokka dropped his head against his pillow. "I _am_ good at it, aren't I?"

"If your nightly wheezing's any indication, you might just be the best at it. The World's Strongest Snorebender." She passed her hand through the air as though smoothing a banner, then climbed to her feet and said, "I'm gonna go refill the canteens and take care of this shirt. Call if you need me."

He started to mumble his agreement and was unconscious before he finished the thought behind it. He thus missed Toph tucking him in—something all for the better, given that he might have just chalked it up to fish-induced hallucinations anyway.

Hours passed—or days. Sokka wasn't sure which and quickly lost the capability to either ask or care. He spent most of his cognizant time throwing up into earthen buckets Toph Bent for that express purpose or shivering wretchedly on his bedroll, his body twisted in cramps, his head a needlebound nook of pain. Otherwise he slept the sleep of the ill and fatigued. His dreams, when he had them, came in snippets and unsettled fragments—more than once he shouted himself awake. Despite his general misery, though, there was one small comfort: he wasn't forced to suffer alone. Toph hovered in his periphery, a constant green shadow or a pair of hands coaxing his chin aloft to drink. Hers were the fingers that warmed him. Hers were the palms that washed him.

When he finally came back to himself and was able to sit up without help or hurling, he glanced aside and found the Earthbender sitting no more than an arm's length away, her knees drawn up to her chest and her chin pillowed there. She blinked drowsily and asked, rubbing an eye, "Snoozles? You okay?"

Sokka stretched experimentally. His whole body was a giant twinge and his legs still demonstrated the strength of overcooked pasta, but he felt worlds better than he had in… how long had it been?

"Was I sick a long time?" he ventured instead. A cursory glance around the clearing told him only that it was daytime: the canopy overhead obscured the sun.

Toph shrugged. "Two days-ish." Her face was pinched, he noticed, her cheeks sallow and the skin beneath her eyes stretched taut.

"Have you slept?" he croaked. "Have you eaten?"

For a moment she was quiet. Her toes flexed down into the clearing's soft silt; her shoulders hunched and about her knees her arms tightened, the knuckles of her fingers bleached white. "I rationed the food," she admitted finally. "Just in case we had to stay a while. And… I wanted to keep a foot on you. You know. In case you, uh. Needed anything."

Maybe it was because he'd recently upchucked the majority of his body's fluids and was on the verge of dehydration, but Sokka suddenly felt warm and fuzzy all over. Throwing open his arms, he insisted, "C'mere, Toph. Let me show you my appreciation. Let me _hug_ you."

Toph didn't budge. "No way, Snoozles," she denied. "You smell _terrible_."

A bath, a toothbrushing, and a final quick nap later, Sokka and Toph were on the footpath again. They ambled. Off in the west the sun sank like a coin toward the horizon, its edges etched copper, its blazing fingers spilling across the fields in marigolds and tangerines. Sensing evening's approach, crickets sawed out tittering hymns; the wind blew in sharp from the north, cooling down the day toward cobalt, and Sokka felt himself getting stronger with every slow step taken.

"I'll take care of you too, you know," he told Toph. She was still carrying their pack—he'd dropped it twice trying. Her eyes flicked in his direction and he cemented, smiling, "I'll take care of you if you ever need it. Or if you just ask. I'll do all… _any_ of those things you did for me back there."

Toph's eyebrows arched. "Really?"

He gave her a salute she couldn't see. "Definitely. It's a promise."

Her mouth quirked and her next question idled out gradually, thoughtful. "You'll do… any of the things I did for you? If I ask?"

"Absolutely."

Toph grinned. "Cool deal," she opined, and they walked on past sunset. The stars came out. The moon rose, splendid and full, and when it was halfway up the sky's surge they made camp and, to Toph's delight, a soup for supper.

As they were preparing for bed, though, the Earthbender made no move to construct her customary tent. She instead slipped over to Sokka and sat down on the edge of his bedroll. He blinked up at her in surprise and she queried, her face solemn and sly at once in the moonlight, "Remember what you said earlier? About doing something for me that I did for you—you know, if I asked?"

"Hey, yeah." Sokka sat up. Cracking his knuckles, he nudged, "What'll it be, Toph?"

After the smallest pause, Toph reached for and grasped one of his hands. She guided it to the first button beneath her collar and said, "I'm gonna need you to help me take off my shirt."


	36. Cozy

**Commentary: **I am having so much fun with these! I wish challenges like this happened more often… I think I'd write more. As always, thanks so much for the favs and the reviews. If I haven't replied to you yet in a storm of gratitude, please know that I do deeply appreciate it.

**Words: **2,271

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**Word FORTY-SIX: Cozy**

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"You know something? Huh? You know _something_, Snoozles? I might just kill you for this."

So said Toph as she struggled to stay upright. Her left foot gave a traitorous wobble, screeched on the ice, shot out—her arms pinwheeled desperately. One of her groping hands seized about Sokka's ear and he yelped, stapling his own fingers over her hips. By the grace of some benevolent spirit they managed to avoid crashing down to the rink in a heap.

"Easy! _Easy_!" Sokka coaxed his best friend. "C'mon, you're panicking—don't do that, you'll just fall—"

"Look at my leg. _Look at my leg_, asshole, and tell me I haven't already pretty much _completed_ falling!"

Sokka looked down at Toph's leg. Cocked out at an angle threatening on perpendicular, it quivered from thigh to ankle. With a soft sigh, Sokka leaned down and gently took hold of that ankle. He eased it and the leg to which it was attached back beneath Toph, ignoring the clench of her fingers on his ear, the jab of her elbow in his ribs. When she was, for better or worse, standing up straight again in her skates, he said, "There we go. Better?"

"In what sense?" she snapped. "Better as in oh _hi_, I still can't see _shit_ but it's okay because, you know, at least I'm not sprawled flat on my back while people with blades strapped to their feet zoom around me like crazy morons? Because if that's what you mean, then yeah, Sokka, it's totally better. It's _prime_. It's fantastic. It's—"

"You know, you sound almost scared, Toph," Sokka interrupted. He gave her elbow a conciliatory pat. "You should've said so earlier. We can stop—really. It's okay."

The comment had the desired effect. Puffing up in her parka like a little green marshmallow, the Earthbender snarled, "I am _not_ scared." Leaving off his ear, she thrust out both hands and ordered, "_Teach me_."

Her fingertips were chapped, her nails gnawed down to the quick. She had refused to wear mittens because, as she'd pointed out, she was already putting on skates and that was e-_freaking_-nough. Her palms were frigid even through the fur of his own gloves when he took them, and he murmured as he drew her, step by skittering step, out farther across the rink, "You have _got_ to be cold."

She shrugged, wobbled, stiffened, and scowled. "Eh. It's fine—_I'm_ fine. Where"—her right skate chuffed the ice and she grunted—"uh. Where are we going?"

"Away from everyone else. Out onto the bay. The ice there is smooth"—not like her hands, he thought; those were catching on his gloves, her skin all sandpaper and grit—"because most of the others are staying near shore—"

"Smart people."

"—where they're running into each other left and right. So," he finished, "yeah. We're venturing out into the great frozen wilds—"

She stumbled again. Bracing her before she could topple over, Sokka found himself with an armful of surly Earthbender and a knee wedged perilously close to his more vulnerable bits. "Let's just," she huffed, "get this started, shall we? The sooner I can passably skate, the sooner I can say I did what no one else thought I would and brag about it for eternity because I'm just that awesome, and—"

The words cut themselves quiet the instant he let go of one of her hands. It flailed helplessly in midair a moment, so white it made the snowfall look beige, before Toph curled it into a fist and tucked it against her hip. Swiveling to his best friend's side such that they stood shoulder to shoulder, Sokka assured her, "It's okay. I've got you, really." He jiggled the hand of hers he still held to demonstrate this. "I won't let go. I promise."

"Fine," she bit out. Her thumb dug into the divot between his first and second knuckles. "So… what do I do? I'm just kinda, uh, standing here. Right now."

Gliding back a little, Sokka surveyed Toph. First off, it was weird seeing her in shoes. She hadn't worn a pair since their days going undercover in the Fire Nation, and those had been flats besides. These were boots, the thick Mamba Jamba rubbery sort that went up to mid-calf, and the blades affixed to their soles only added oomph to their general badass appearance. Speaking of addition: the blades didn't just give Toph more mojo. They gave her more inches. Sokka was used to looking down at his best friend and could still do so now, given that he was wearing skates too, but nothing could change the fact that Toph seemed tall, nigh _towering_, in her new footwear.

"Hello? Snoozles?" Blowing out her breath in a white puff, Toph tugged his hand and snapped him from his reverie. "Are you just gonna stand there silently and expect me to learn this by meditating or something? Because if that's the way you operate, hey, my ass is going back to _land_—"

"No, no," Sokka cut in, "this won't be anything like meditation. I was just trying to think of the best way to approach the situation, that's all." And how exactly was he going to do that anyway? He rubbed his cheek, frowning. He'd never expected Toph to actually get out on the ice, much less accept his mostly-jest offer of teaching her to skate. It had been a while since he'd indulged in the sport himself. He'd outgrown his childhood pair of skates years before meeting Aang and had never been given the opportunity to strap on a new set until now: his skills on the ice were adequate but admittedly rusty. Was he even really _qualified_ to school someone else? Someone like Toph? Someone who couldn't see where she was going or what he, the teacher, was doing?

Shit.

Picking up on his hesitation, Toph heaved a great sigh and observed, "You don't have any idea what to do, do you?"

"Yeeeeah, no." He squeezed her frigid little claw of a hand. "But don't worry too much about that. I'm good at improvising, right?"

Toph glared at him, then tipped her face skyward and groaned, "I am going to die out here." Snowflakes lighted on her dark lashes, feathery and soft. "Why don't we start with basics?" she suggested. "Like, I don't know, how to maybe move with these damn things on my feet?" She gave one foot a ginger twitch.

"That's a good idea," Sokka admitted, "but there's no way for you to see what I'm doing, is there?"

"Not unless you have a miracle stuffed up your butt."

"…right. Negative." The tribesman considered and hedged next, "But I might have the next best thing. Toph, do you remember when you first learned how to Metalbend?"

Turning her face from the press of the wind, the young woman nodded. Her lips quirked. "Uh-huh. That was a good day. Up until, you know, Aang got fried and everything." On her forehead her brows rose, swipes of ink on a snowscape. "Why? What's that got to do with skating?"

"Everything! _Everything_," exulted Sokka. This could work! "When Aang and I found you after you'd gotten away from those goons who kidnapped you—do you remember what you were doing to the earth then? Do you remember how you were moving?"

For the first time since she'd stepped onto the ice, Toph's face broke out in a resplendent grin. "Only hell yes. I was Earthsurfing!"

Her hand tightened at the memory. Squeezing back as hard as he dared, Sokka confessed, "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, Toph. Your Earthsurfing? Looked exactly like ice skating."

_Hffff_. A billow of Toph's breath gusted out in disbelief. "Monkeyfeathers!" she denied.

"No, I'm serious! Totally serious here. In fact"—and he pulled at her insistently—"you need to _feel _how serious I am. Grab a handful of this." Before she could yank away from him, Sokka mashed her fingers up against his face.

Over the slant of her thumb he watched her eyes widen and her cheeks flare red. She pawed at his chin and muttered, "Okay, fine, I get it—let _go_, Snoozles."

"Do you really want me to do that?" teased the tribesman.

The crimson glow on Toph's cheeks spread, blotching along the bridge of her nose. "No," she admitted, and threatened next, "if you want serious, I can _seriously_ injure you and leave your carcass out here to rot."

"You're so sweet, Toph."

Hunkering down into the shell of her parka, the Earthbender shivered. "Yeah, I'm a regular darling. Okay—right. Ice skating and Earthsurfing look the same." She squared her shoulders. "So I should… act like I'm Earthsurfing?"

Sokka affirmed sagely, "That is exactly what you should do."

There was a pause. Snow sifted down between them, drifting slow and serene; the distant shouts of their friends echoed across the ice, and if Sokka squinted he could see their shadows off in the bay's blue haze. The heel of Toph's hand brushed the seam of his glove. "Okay," she agreed, and began.

He'd seen her Earthbend, what—a hundred times? A thousand? This time was at once exactly the same as and completely different from all those other occasions: her movements were familiar, her stance customary. But the coil of muscle in her arm snapped and Sokka felt the power in it, the _command_, and they shot forward over the ice together as though ejected from a cannon. The momentum surprised Sokka. He staggered and Toph did too, both unbalanced, both flailing.

"LESS HIP!" screeched the tribesman. "MORE LEG!"

Toph adjusted and instantly their pace slowed. Sokka was able to match the scissory sway of his best friend's knees now that they weren't careening across the ice at the speed of death. They moved as one, spraying snow and salt-frost; their elbows jostled first, jabbed next, and finally settled to a slow, easy rub.

"Am I doing it?" asked Toph. She licked her lips and winced—they were already chapped. "Am I? Is this it? Is this skating?"

"No," Sokka disagreed. Toph's face swiveled toward his, expression all disappointment, until the tribesman admitted, "This is better than skating. You're a pro, Toph."

For the briefest moment Toph's mouth was soft and puckered, windworn lips drawn just enough that the crescent of her teeth sparked and shone beneath them. Her eyes lidded. Her cheeks burned. "Of course I am," she declared hoarsely, and the moment was gone and it was the wind, Sokka thought—it had to be the wind making her face all red like that.

They ghosted across the bay for a while in relative quiet, serenaded only by the shushing whisper of their skates and the snicker of the breeze over the ice. The snowfall thickened. The day's light fell. "We should probably go inside," Sokka said at last, reluctantly. He couldn't feel any part of his face and his limbs were starting to chill despite his coat's padding—he thought Toph was probably numb all over.

She nodded. There were snowflakes in her hair and they absconded in a shower down her shoulders. "Yeah." She didn't much sound like she wanted to stop either. "Probably," she echoed. And after, quiet, "Sokka?"

"Mmhm?"

He was expecting a philosophical observation from Toph—at the very least a grudging admission about how cool it was to zoom around on blades. He was instead asked simply, "How do we stop?"

He blinked into the bay's low glare. "Uh… come again?"

"How do we stop?" Toph repeated.

"That," Sokka opined at length, "is an excellent question."

Across the rink echoed the sound of Toph's face falling into an open palm.

Eventually they determined to fall into the snowbanks along the bay's edge. The idea was successful if not freezing, and Sokka hopped and danced as he worked slush out of his pants. Toph, who had long ago lost much of the feeling in her limbs, stood by with a bemused smirk and sopping hair.

As they walked back to their lodgings, the tribesman said happily, "That was epically sweet, Toph. Skating with you is like skating with a firework. _Pshew_!"

He glanced at her sidelong. She looked a mix of completely exhausted and utterly smug. Rolling her shoulders, she yawned and agreed, muffled, "Yeah. I'm glad you got the opportunity to experience my astounding talent firsthand."

"For sure."

"Uh-huh."

The snow crunched underfoot. Their skates jangled. "So," Sokka ventured gingerly, "did you, uhm. Did you have fun?"

There was a clenching pressure between them. Startled, Sokka checked it and found that their hands—his and Toph's—were still hooked together, fur on flesh, thumb on thumb. Where she was touching him was the only part of him still warm.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I had fun." Her knuckles bumped up along his lifeline. "Thanks," she provided, and added last, "especially for keeping your promise."

"My promise?"

She held up the knot of their fingers. "You didn't let go."

"Right." One step. Two. Three. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Toph's mouth twitched. "If you want, you can now," she allowed. It sounded like she had to force out the words.

"Do you really want me to do that?" Sokka wondered for the second time in so many hours.

Toph was tellingly silent this time—her fingers tellingly still too, and her face a red circle against the snowfall's slow slant. Maybe it wasn't the wind after all.

Four steps. Five. Six. Seven. Eight: and on.

Sokka kept his hold throughout.


	37. Tease

**Commentary: **=) Prompt six. If you see some italics stuck together, please forgive me. This site loves to muck up my formatting and I don't always catch all the errors.

**Words: **3,286

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**Word FORTY-SEVEN: Tease**

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"Look, Toph, I'm sorry—"

"You"—the Earthbender wheeled on him and stabbed his chest with a rigid index finger—"don't know the _meaning _of sorry. So just save it, okay? And leave me alone." Turning again, she stomped off toward the trees ringing the group's campsite and snarled over her shoulder, "Or I might just snap your scrawny little neck."

Sokka threw a haphazard prayer for strength heavenward. Resolute, he followed the fuming Earthbender, ignoring Aang's half-sympathetic look and Katara's small frown. He caught up to Toph and argued, reaching for her shoulder, "Hey, c'mon. My neck isn't _that_ scrawny—"

His fingertips brushed the cloth of her tunic. Before he could blink she had him encased in a cocoon of rock up to his nipples. As he grunted and strained at the sudden stone, she pivoted on her heel to face him, her lips drawn back from her teeth, her hands curled into ready fists. Lifting one of the latter to bat it lightly against his chin, she demanded, "What part of _leave me alone _did you not understand, Sokka?"

"You," he snapped back, "are _overreacting_! I said I was sorry! Spirits, what else do you _want_?"

"What else do I want? _What else do I want_?" screeched the Earthbender. Hooking her fingers in the fabric of his collar, she shook him and exploded, "I want my freaking jerky back! That's what I want!"

"Uhm." Sokka attempted to lift a hand to shield himself from Toph's flying spit, realized it was impossible, and countered instead, "Okay, first off. To be fair. Your supposed jerky was in a little baggie, and that little baggie was stuffed in the pack with the rest of the food—"

"That little _baggie_," growled Toph, "had my name on it."

"And let me guess. _You're _the one who wrote your name, right?"

Toph leaned back and folded her arms. "Of course." Her lip curled. "Why? Are you saying I can't write my own name?"

"Well, given that your name was actually an indecipherable squiggle, I think that's _exactly_ what I'm saying—" The rock already clutched so firmly about Sokka tightened still more. He broke off his statement in a strangled geep. His legs went numb; his heart flipflopped helplessly in his chest. As the first vestiges of real fear crept across his vision in the form of bright blue specks, his sister intervened.

"That's _enough_," Katara insisted. Stepping between Sokka's prison and the Earthbender who had made it in the first place, the older girl stomped a foot and presumably scowled at Toph. Treated to nothing but the sight of his sibling's shoulders, Sokka could only imagine Katara's expression. "You two have done nothing but fight all day. I'm sick of it. Do you hear me? _Sick of it_."

"Oh boo hoo," Toph snorted. "Did we really offend your precious sensibilities, Sugar Queen? Because if so, maybe you should just butt out."

"Yeah," huffed Sokka. Despite being secretly glad for her help, he didn't really fancy Katara trying to fight his battles for him. He was a war hero, a gifted swordsman—so what if Toph had singlehandedly invented a new Bending art and was probably the best Earthbender on the planet? He could take her. Gasping for breath against the constricting pressure of Toph's bonds, he wheezed, "B-butt out, Katara."

Katara glared over her elbow at her brother. "Toph," she managed through clenched teeth, "let him go."

Toph protested immediately, "But—"

"But nothing," interjected Katara. She went on, "Sokka, ration out Toph some of your jerky."

"But it's the spicy kind!" whined the tribesman piteously.

"I don't care what kind it is!" The group's resident master Waterbender threw up her hands. "You two are going to do what I say and you're going to do it now," she informed the feuding pair, "or I swear by Tui and La that I will not finish tonight's dinner. Have I made myself clear?"

A moment of tense silence fell over the camp. Aang, who had been polishing the ridge of Appa's saddle, watched his friends anxiously from the fire's simmering fringe. Crickets churred. Beads of sweat agleam on her forehead, Toph glowered. Sokka squirmed as a pebble worked its way past the hem of his breeches and scuttered down into the seam of his loincloth.

"_Fine_," they said together at last. Toph smacked a foot into the ground and Sokka's bonds dissolved into dust—he collapsed, panting desperately. With a grumble Katara slipped from between them and stepped back to their fire. Aang smiled, expression relieved. The hum he produced as he resumed his work on the saddle turned Sokka's stomach.

"Ugh," muttered Toph, echoing the sentiment. She extended a hand down to the tribesman. "C'mon. Up you get," came the encouragement. "You owe me some jerky."

Sokka accepted the proffered limb. Heaving himself aright, he dusted off his tunic, shook free the intrusive pebble from his breeches. "Yeah, whatever," he groused. "Geez, I've got grit in my armpits here."

"Aw, don't complain too much." Patting his hip, Toph leaned up on her tiptoes and crooned quietly into his ear, "I mean, it _is_ all your fault. Since you apparently don't know how to read."

"You don't know how to write!" the tribesman yelled back, rounding on the diminutive Earthbender. "You and your freaking SCRAWL—"

"_That's it_!"

A finger-thick tendril of water sliced them neatly apart and gave them each a swat on the buttocks for good measure. Toph cursed; Sokka yelped. Both looked sidelong at Katara, who was brandishing a wooden soup spoon in one hand and a water whip in the other.

Gesturing angrily with that spoon, the group's self-appointed matriarch snarled, "Okay. Seriously? You're both adults!" The ladle spun and dipped. "But since you two want to behave like children, I'll put you in time-out like children! _Toph_." Frowning across the clearing at her fellow Bender, Katara mandated, "You go back to that giant rock on the footpath. Sokka—the crook of the stream."

"But she—"

"You two will stay at those places," seethed Katara, heedless of her brother's plea, "until I come to get you later. Neither of you will move or—"

"Yeah," interrupted Toph. "Or what, Sugar Queen? Huh?" She flexed her biceps and squared her shoulders, scuffing her heels on the clearing's floor as a bull might paw a pasture when given a rival.

"Or I'll throw the rest of the jerky into the fire," the Waterbender said solemnly. "Every last bit of it. The barbecue-flavored. The honey mesquite. The"—her voice lowered to a growl—"_teriyaki_."

"It's imported!" Sokka squawked, outraged. "Toph and I had to pay a _fortune_—"

"Don't care."

"You wouldn't," hissed the Earthbender.

"Oh," insisted Katara, withdrawing from her vest a tightly-wrapped and particularly meat-smelling package, "but I would."

She lowered the package toward the fire. The paper crackled. At that faint sound Toph stiffened, chewed her lip. Finally she performed an about-face and stalked off into the trees.

"You're barbaric," Sokka lamented when the Earthbender was lost to sight.

"You're leaving," Katara reminded him. She dropped the package another inch. "Oh no," she sighed. "My fingers are so slippery—"

Sokka scowled and, hitching his boomerang high on his shoulder, strode sullenly from the campsite.

The night pressed in around him, balmy for the summer season and full of mosquitoes too. Swatting a good few and missing still more, the tribesman muttered occasionally to himself, "Over twenty years old… thinks she can treat me like a kid… stupid damn _jerky_…" He reached the stream after about five minutes and followed it another ten to its signature bend, where he hunkered down next to a rock and watched the evening's thin moonlight play over the water. It was beautiful, and Sokka was a poetic sort of guy. Any other time he might've appreciated the spectral scene. Now, though, he jerked up handfuls of grass and shredded the blades methodically, too deep in a sulk to think of anything but sisterly injustice.

"I can't believe we're missing dinner because of this," commiserated a voice somewhere off to his left.

"Yeah," Sokka agreed, and lurched around in surprise next. "_Geez_! Toph?"

"Don't shout, Meathead," hissed the Earthbender. Her slight shadow slipped around the rock at the stream's edge and dropped at his side, all knees and elbows. "We're pretty far from camp, but don't underestimate your sister—her killjoy senses have a huge range."

"No kidding. What are you doing here?" Sokka demanded. "She told you to go back to—"

"Big rock, footpath, yadda yadda." Leaning over, Toph dropped her head in the tribesman's lap and sneered up at him. "What? Do you always listen to your sister, sweet little obedient Sokka?"

"You know I don't." Shoving Toph's head forcibly off its cushion and into the grass, Sokka yanked his knees up to his chest. "I hope that hurt," he added nastily.

"Look at _you_," laughed his companion. "All vindictive and shit! Wow! I didn't know you had it in you, Sokka!"

"And I didn't know your vocabulary was broad enough to include a word like vindictive," snipped the tribesman, "so that makes two lessons we've learned tonight, huh?"

Toph arched her brows. Working herself up on her elbows, she deposited her chin in her hands and observed frankly, "Someone's pissy tonight." Her legs hooked at the ankles and waved behind her, toes stretching midair.

"I'm not pissy," Sokka denied. "I'm hungry. And," he added, "I'm tired of fighting with you. I mean, debating is one thing. One fine, fine thing. I can debate all day. I can debate until the stars fall down. But Toph"—he fisted his fingers in the grass and yanked up another chunk of it—"this is, what? The third time this week we've been at each other's throats about something stupid?"

"I don't really think jerky is stupid." She blinked at him. He said nothing, picking apart the grass by the roots. _Squick-squick, squick-squick_.

Heaving a sigh, Toph folded her arms and dropped her face into the circle they made. "All right," came the muffled admission. "Okay. Maybe we've been arguing a little more than usual. But I mean, you got all huffy when I used that soft fluff in your bag as toilet paper—"

"That was my pillow's stuffing, Toph."

"_And that was my jerky you ate, so_—"

Slamming his fist into the soft earth of the stream's bank, Sokka insisted, "I didn't know it was yours because you can't write your own freaking name, okay?" She opened her mouth to object and he rebuffed her, "No. Just no, Toph. You wanna know what it looked like? Huh? You want to know what the writing"—he felt he was being generous calling it that—"on your precious little jerky baggie _looked like_?"

Giving her no chance to answer, he dug his fingers into the streambed's silt, came up with a slopping palmful of mud, and slapped it against the flesh of her bare arm. He used his pinky to squiggle nonsense in the mud's slippery canvas and finished, furious, "That! That's what it looked like! Nothing! It looked like _nothing_, Toph!"

The badgerfrog croaked again, louder this time. The cattails made hush-hush gossip. In the moonlight Toph's mouth curled down and twitched; her fingers clenched, and the mud rolled off her arm like rain off a roof. "Yeah?" she whispered. "Nothing, huh?"

Sokka felt the attack coming. He had time to scramble halfway upright before Toph lunged and slammed into him, her arms knifed over his ribs. One of her hands dug into his hip, the other his shoulder—she bent him backward over the rock that marked the stream's curve, her elbow a merciless pestle in his kidney, her knee a high peg between his thighs.

"Ow!" the tribesman cried. "Toph, what the hell—"

"You wanna throw dirt on me?" she interrupted. Leaving off his shoulder to grope out beyond the rock, Toph resumed, "You wanna pretend you're some kind of Earthbender? Okay, that's cool. I'm a big girl. I can take it." She found what she wanted and lifted her hand back into view. It was full of thick dark mud, glops of it running down her arm to the elbow. "C'mon," she finished, and smacked the mud into his startled fingers. "Do it right. Show me how it goes, big man! Write my name. _Write my name_."

She jerked his arm aloft. The stuff spattered: over his chest and down her front too, the spots almost black in the moonlight. "Uhm," he said.

"My face," she replied, as though he'd asked a question. Her mouth split into a grin, ear to ear, as she dared him, "Write it on my face, Sokka. Don't be shy."

Sokka flicked his eyes to the mud in his hand—looked back up at Toph. "Let me get this straight," he insisted. "You, uh—you're giving me… permission. To smear mud on you. On your face," he clarified.

Leaning back to spread her arms, Toph beamed and allowed, "Lay it on me, Snoozles."

She was heavy, her leg pressed over him still. Sokka nevertheless wormed partway upright beneath her and held up his handful of mud, considering, studying the canvas of Toph's face. Pale, smooth—but there was a nose in the way, and a mouth bound to interfere with his work. Where to start…?

Sticking out his thumb, he brought it close to Toph's ear and admitted, "This is a pretty unconventional teaching method, you know. Also, you're kinda crushing me."

"I'm an unconventional student," Toph replied, and tacked on, "deal with it. I'm punishing you."

"For what?"

"For being a moron. For eating my jerky. Now write my _name_, Sokka, before I decide to take more serious measures."

Sokka frowned and, with his free hand, cupped Toph's chin to hold it still. He maintained as he brought his mud-covered thumb to her cheek, "I told you I was sorry. I am sorry. But you're making a mountain of a mole hill and—" He wrote her name. Her flesh dimpled under his touch; her eyelids shuttered. Sketching a radical's root over the shelf of her lip, he finished, "—it should have looked like this. Your name, I mean. If it had looked like this I would've known and left the jerky alone."

He drew back to survey his handiwork. There it was, Toph's name, stretched cheek to cheek and shining stark against her porcelain skin. The characters wobbled but hey, so did their canvas, and gingerly Toph reached up with two careful fingers to map the spaces between them.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, yeah." Rolling her hips up against his—her knee inched higher between his legs—Toph draped herself sidelong over his chest and dropped her fingers to his cheek. She drummed them there, thoughtful, her other hand still tracing the letters he'd marked on her face. "Like this?" she wondered, and feathered her palm down his jaw.

Sokka said nothing, instead staring up at Toph's silhouette superimposed above him. Her thumb worried the corner of his mouth; her face fell, her head close enough to him that a damp trellis of her hair, a headband escapee, tickled his chin. She smelled of dirt and sweat, of strength and steel. Her cheek touched his—the letters of her name smeared. Her shoulder rolled into the seam of his arm and her chest ghosted over his ribs.

Grinning into his chin, she asked again, "Like this?" Down his throat her hand slid, her fingertips warmer than the night around them.

"You're not asking about your name anymore, are you?" Sokka managed.

She popped open his tunic's clasp a second later in reply, raking her nails down his chest next. Sokka yelped and jerked. Their hips jounced; their foreheads knocked together and Toph shrieked helplessly with pained laughter, rolling from atop him and back into the grass. At Sokka's wordless bark of frustration she gasped, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry—I'm _sorry_, it's just—I've been trying to get up the courage to do that for, what, forever? And you—you clumsy bastard, _ow_, my head—"

She clutched at her skull, half-giggling, half-crying. Still sprawled over the rock she'd pinned him to like some sacrificial offering, Sokka goggled at his best friend and echoed, "Forever?"

"Forever! For-freaking-ever, Sokka. I mean, what the hell, okay?" Pressing a palm flat over her brow, Toph shrugged and said, "I gave you space after the Suki thing. I didn't say a word when Ty Lee tied you up and left you naked in the middle of that tent—"

"I wasn't completely naked!"

"—that buttfloss loincloth did not count as clothing and you know it." Heaving a sigh, Toph wiped the remnants of mud from her face and finished, "But it's been over five years since I started trying this, all right? Since I started following you around. I even went with you to the pole. And I just—I just pretty much, I dunno, _molested_ you here out in the warm summer moonlight, didn't I? Isn't that a scene right out of a smut scroll?"

"The mosquitoes are different," Sokka opined, and smacked at one. "But pretty much, yeah." And then, "How do you know what's typically in smut scrolls?"

"Katara reads them to me sometimes. Says they're educational." Toph tipped her head toward him. Sokka slid down the rock and settled next to her, and she muttered, "Well? What else can I do to get you to either notice and ravish me or tell me to get lost?"

Scratching at the back of his neck, the tribesman admitted, "I think I'm noticing you pretty hardcore right now."

Her temple thunked into his shoulder. "So?" she wheedled, wiggling her eyebrows. "Gonna ravish me now?"

"I," he denied, "am going to take a few minutes to let the revelation sink in, if you don't mind."

Shrugging again, Toph closed her eyes and acknowledged, "I have a headache anyway. _Thanks_, Snoozles." She chanced next, slow, "You're not running away screaming."

"Is that okay? I mean, if you _want _me to run away screaming—"

"No, no. I'm good."

Elbow to elbow, they sat for a while in stifling quiet punctuated only by the whine of the night's biting insects and the shush of the stream.

"So," Sokka said at last. "That was pretty embarrassing for both of us."

Toph's toes contracted in the grass. "Uhm. Yeah."

"I think we should start again," suggested the tribesman. Turning to face Toph, he reached for her hands and drew them up to his cheeks, where he pressed her palms flat and said through the slant of her fingers, "If, uh. If that's cool."

Toph's thumb twitched. "You're good with this?"

A moment passed. Two. Sokka admitted finally, "You said you've been waiting five years? Well, uh, I've been _wondering_ at least _six_, okay, Master of the Mixed Signals, and I think this is maybe the best thing to happen to me in... what, you said forever? Yeah, forever. So uhm, see. You should've maybe done this sooner."

"Oh," Toph assured him, forcing him back against the rock again, "don't worry. I'll make up for lost time."

She kept her word.

* * *

"I can't find them," Katara told Aang later, crouched by the fire with her chin on her knees. Glancing over at the Avatar, she wondered, "Do you think they're okay? What if they're killing each other?"

Aang smiled into his bowl. "I'm pretty sure they're working out their differences just fine," he said. Holding out the ladle, he offered, "More soup?"


	38. Secrets

**Commentary: **Tokka Week's over. =( Aw. I had fun! I hope you did too, readers! And because I feel like I should say so: this was done well before the deadline. I just forgot to post it here. Herpderp.

**Words: **1,699

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**Word FORTY-EIGHT: Secrets**

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Toph steps off the ferry at Chameleon Bay with a queasy stomach and a frown stretched down over her face like a fallen flag. She is the ferry's only departing passenger at this particular stop—the beach is deserted save for the one who urged her here in the first place, and she walks to him slowly, savoring the pulse of him through the sand. He lifts a hand to wave to her out of instinct alone. Toph mirrors the gesture, only partially aware her hand is too high and canted off in the wrong direction. When she draws abreast of him she makes to keep walking, but he reaches out and touches her shoulder, pinching between his fingers the fabric of her tunic.

"Toph," he says, and that's all that's necessary to make her turn roughly on her heel to him. In an instant their mouths are warring with one another, their teeth clicking, his nose driving its blade into her cheek and her lashes tickling sharp over that sensitive spot just beneath his eye. The ferry chugs away and in its shadow he tears open her vest, delving his hands beneath it to grate his palms down her ribs.

"Sst!" She pulls back at that, his wrist caught in her hand, her face thrust into his shoulder. "No—_no_, Sokka, _stop_," she demands, but it's too late. He's felt it. He's seeing it now too, probably, if the stutter of his heartbeat is any indication. A sharp sweep of his breath confirms it.

They stand for a moment together there on the beach, his hands frozen partway across the seam of her ribcage, hers holding bunches of fabric just beneath his shoulderblades. The waves gurgle. A single gullpiper lists low on the evening breeze and alights near them, pecking hopefully in the thin surf. "It's true," Sokka says at last, and the gullpiper chides him. Heedless of its cries, the tribesman observes again, because uttering it once was apparently not enough, "Toph, Spirits, _it's true_."

The swell of her belly, faint but unmistakable even so, gleams like a melon's rind in the moonlight. Her undershirt scarcely covers it.

"Well—yeah. Yeah, it's true." She can't exactly lie, not with the evidence out in plain sight. Feeling vulnerable about that evidence, she takes a single step back from him and leans down to pick up her vest again. Once she has shaken it free of sand, she shrugs back into it and makes to redo the buttons. Sokka's hands stop her, though, clutching at her fingers, pulling at her thumbs. She can feel him trembling.

"Let me look," he manages. His voice hitches thick in his throat. Is he crying? He sounds like he's crying, but they're on a freaking beach and everything smells like salt here and Toph can't be sure. "Let me look," he repeats, and adds a third time, "let me look at it, c'mon."

Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, the sand sifting between her toes, Toph protests, "Sokka—"

"I was a part of this too," he interrupts her. "It—it was my idea. To… you know." His weird choked voice cants down to a whisper and he's squeezing her hand tightly now—not so much that it hurts, but almost. "I should get to look," he reasons. "I… I _want_ to look." A moment slips by, strange and soft somehow, and he husks to her in the lull between waves when it is over, "_Please_, Toph."

His tone is the sort he might normally use in the bedroom, and because of that Toph's ears color a shade of maroon she will never comprehend due to, well, duh. The flush spreads in a blotchy cape over her cheeks and ribbons down her throat next, and she scratches her nails over his knuckles before finally sighing and letting her hands fall. She braces them on her hips, worrying her palms against her belt's rough grain—she thrusts her belly forward too. Sokka's heartbeat wobbles like a branch in a windstorm. Geez, is he going to pass out?

"Oh," he murmurs, small. "Wow. Toph—it's. It's, uhm." Sucking in a hoarse lungful of air, he scrapes his arm across his eyes, too overwhelmed to finish.

"Huge?" she provides.

"No, no, I wouldn't say it's huge," he denies the next instant, which means he would totally say it's huge. "It's… it's very round. And soft-looking." That brings about his next query: "Can I touch—"

"No."

"But it's mine too." A pause. A pregnant, expecting, gravid pause. The dunegrass ripples, _saaaah_, and the now distant _chwon-chwon_ of the ferry's horn echoes back to them across the bay. "Uh," Sokka hedges, "yeah—so. It, see… it is mine, isn't it?" Her eyes widen. He hurries on, "Because there were a few rumors—"

Toph scowls at him. It's a wonder his flesh doesn't just bubble right off, the look is so venomous. "Rumors?" she fires back. Her fingers crook into claws.

Helplessly Sokka gestures. The knuckles of his hand brush her belly and they both freeze, Toph's face clenched in something close to a snarl, Sokka's expression more akin to panic. "Yeah," he agrees. He must have a death wish. "Some… some other guys said you might've… uhm. You were gone a long time and… and they said they'd heard you might've seen other people along the way—"

"_Seen_?"

"_You know what I mean_." Sokka chews his lip and stares down at his best friend. "Is it true?" he forces out. "Was there… someone else?"

Spirits, he sounds like he's about to cry again. Buckling her arms tight over her middle, Toph sighs, "Sokka, you're being a drama queen here—"

He drops to his knees in the sand and, without asking, presses his palms over the swell that's been getting harder and harder for her to hide over the past few months. He tucks his cheek to it next, his cheek rasping tight against her flesh, and all the wind goes out of her as he demands, "_Is this baby mine or not_?"

The gullpiper sobs.

"Do I really have that much of a reputation?" Toph asks softly, reaching down in a rare moment of supplication to touch her tribesman's cheek.

Sokka agrees, sullen, "It's no secret that you're really good." He turns the purse of his mouth into the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Grouchily he kisses it, and Toph smirks.

"I am really good," she affirms. "I'm the best." But then she leans back a little, jostling him away, so she may dip a hand down into her pants. She unhooks a clasp. His breath catches. "I'm wanted everywhere," she continues, "but Sokka, come on, okay? Do you really think I'd let anyone else do this to me?"

Her pants fall around her ankles in a puddle.

"You wanted to look," she mutters. She drives her face into her palm. She can't believe she's humoring him, and as she peels up her undershirt with her free hand she indulges, "So go ahead. Take a good long look at your baby, Sokka."

Sokka looks.

The keg of firewhiskey is tied to her waist by way of a myriad sashes and scarves. Pairs of socks stuffed into its cracks serve as padding; a line of tiny hooks, like teeth, keep it affixed high to her belt, and there are red marks on her thighs where the keg's lowermost rim has slapped again and again, presumably as she's walked. With a great sigh she yanks it free, shredding cloth, snapping metal, and drops it onto the sand between them. It sloshes faintly.

"Six months I carried that around for you," she growls. "Six. Six freaking _months_, Sokka." She smacks his shoulder with the flat of her hand. "I have splinters in my—"

"When I wrote asking you to bring me something special, I meant a flask! And people started talking months before you got here—I mean, they said it was _big_, but I didn't think—"

"Well, go big or go home," Toph snaps. She opens her mouth to say something else when Sokka flares his hands over her belly again: this time he's touching bare skin, though. Rocking forward on his knees, he traces his mouth slowly down the stretch of flesh between her navel and the seam of her loincloth, his mouth hot, his lips a little wet, and Toph curls her toes in the sand and closes her eyes and thinks that six months was a long, long time to miss out on this.

"You've lived up to your reputation," he informs her, smiling into the twist of her hip. "Confirmed all the rumors."

"Yeah." She scuffles her feet and twines her fingers in his hair. It's gotten longer in her absence, more shaggy. She likes it. "So, uh. You gonna… show me how much you appreciate my efforts?"

His thumbs feather over her thighs. "Right now? Here on the beach?"

"You gotta problem with that?"

He laughs into her waist and drops his mouth down her body like a coal in answer.

Later, when they are sprawled together on a blanket of their clothes and sipping at their firewhiskey—Sokka brought cups and little paper umbrellas—the tribesman glances over at his best friend. She's like a living statue in the moonlight, muscle and might made real by the smudges he's left on her neck, on her breasts. "How did you get the keg past the embargo line at the border customs points anyway?" he ventures. "I mean, a parka can only hide so much. And it's almost summer."

Her eyelids fall down over her gaze like curtains. She smiles at him, slow and lazy, sated—for now. Her finger traces possessive circles across his hip. "I didn't try to hide it," she says simply. "I just told them it was something else."

Curiosity lifts his brows high. "Yeah? What?"

"A pregnancy," she replies, and clinks cups with him. "You're the father. Congratulations." As he spews out his precious mouthful of illegally imported liquor, she tacks on innocently, "Speaking of rumors, hey, guess what? I heard you're having twins."


	39. Modern

**Commentary**: It's easy to get lost in an AU. I love reading them but I don't normally write them—I worry about drifting away from the characters. This time, though, I couldn't resist. So here's a **warning**: this is a modern AU. No actual Bending, though there are inferences if you squint.

I'm not sure if I'll write more like this. If you like it, let me know! If you don't, please also let me know.

**Words: **3,500

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**Word FORTY-NINE: Modern**

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"Oh my God, what is this shit we're listening to?"

Sokka lifted himself up on his elbows and glanced aside at the midget sprawled across his bed. Her face was in his pillow, her fingers laced in a lattice over the back of her neck. Thumbs drumming, ankles hooked and swinging, she jerked her face around and aimed it in his direction, her brows a heavy line across her forehead.

"What is this shit?" she repeated, frowning. "It's all, wow, happy-cheery-peppy and Sokka, you don't play this in public, do you? Because people might start to wonder about your sexuality. I am. I'm wondering about it right now."

She reached out, fingers scrabbling. They found the edge of his desk, feathered there, drifted sidelong, discovered a Cheeto. Snatching back the orange crisp, she popped it into her mouth and chewed it vigorously. Crumbs sprayed down his pillowcase.

"It's Hellogoodbye," Sokka answered distractedly. Raking a hand through his hair, he dropped his gaze again to his screen and sighed. "Wonder about my sexuality all you want. It's _awesome_. And soothing. Which I need right now, because this assignment, Toph, you have no idea—"

"Judging by the sound of your nails gouging out ditches on your scalp, I'd say it's for that ECON course," Toph disagreed. She was already searching for another Cheeto—he knew because her filthy orange fingernails interceded into his vision, scuttering down across his keyboard's rim. Her arm stretched and a bruise, black as ink and spreading the same, fluttered in the well of her wrist. He scowled and caught the limb, pinning it at the elbow.

"Hey," he said, soft. "Hey, Toph, what the hell?" He smoothed his thumb along the bruise, watching her face. Her eyes narrowed. Closed. The corner of her mouth curled and twitched.

"You know what it is. Leave it," she added, and flexed the arm. Under his palm her elbow rose, rippling—warning. For all she might have weighed ninety pounds in her kicks soaking wet, Toph was entirely muscle and knew it, and Sokka didn't like pain. He dropped his hold. Jerking her arm back to her chest, Toph rolled over on top of it and stuck her tongue out at him.

Sokka wasn't amused. "How long are you gonna let him push you around?" he asked. "You can't keep coming here—"

"Really? I can't?" She grinned. "Because you can try hiding your key all you like—I'll still find it. Or I'll just climb up the fire escape; you'll never remember to lock the window too—"

"That's dangerous!"

"That's the way it is," sighed the teenager, shifting onto her back next. She flung her arms akimbo, the bruised one nigh touching the wall, the other a jackknife across his desk and laptop screen. There was Cheeto dust in her hair. "And admit it, Sokka. You wouldn't know what to do if you came home and found this place empty." She grinned at him.

"I would sleep," Sokka denied. "I would sleep and maybe get a chance to finally eat some of my own food—"

"Don't act so protective of it. It's ramen, geez. Mountains and mountains of ramen."

"Don't act snobby," he shot back. "You eat enough of it for three people."

"And since you continue to _buy _enough for three people," Toph crowed, "I know you don't really mind. So shut up and—_goddamnit_, Sokka, change the playlist or something, would you? This electro-pop crap is killing my ears."

When Sokka made no move to alter his music selection, the blind girl rolled aright, curled her feet carefully over the sock-strewn dorm floor, and crossed the room in six measured steps. She jerked the iPod from its dock—"Hey!" Sokka cried—and spun the selection wheel. _Ticka-ticka-ticka_: pausing at random, she tapped the center button, replaced the player, and grinned as "Enter Sandman" began to blare through the dock's small speakers. "That's more like it!" Folding her arms, she nodded toward Sokka's desk and wondered, "So, speaking of food and sleep, are you ready to eventually get some? Because until you ask me for help, buddy, you're totally high and dry there."

"Are you trying to say that I, Sokka, master genius and Business major, am unable to complete a simple homework assignment?" sneered the older teenager. "Are you trying to say that _you_, Toph, blind urchin and food-stealer, are better equipped to deal with such an assignment?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. There is no try." Jabbing a finger at him, Toph revisited, "Go on. Read your little problem to this blind, food-stealing urchin and we'll see if I can't figure it out in fifteen seconds. If I do, by the way, that ramen you mentioned earlier? Yeah, you're making me some." She proceeded to crank up the dock's volume, air-jamming to the song's drippy riff.

"There's no way you'll get it. I've been staring at this thing for almost an hour," Sokka growled.

"And therein lies your problem." As abruptly as she'd turned on the music Toph cut it off again, and the quiet was queer as she stepped across the room again and dropped her elbows onto the back of his chair. Nestling her chin into his shoulder, she smirked and nudged, "C'mon. Give someone who can't stare at anything a go, what say? You've got nothing to lose but a couple packs of instant noodles, Sokka."

"And my good academic standing if they catch me cheating—"

"One problem." She wiggled closer. In his flesh the shovel of her chin dug still deeper, sharp and severe, relentless. "Just one. And I won't give you the answer. I'll help you along, that's all. You're allowed to get tutoring, right?"

"Well, yeah. But they're supposed to be approved sources—"

Her arms snaked around him. She was hugging both his scrawny torso and the chair too, nigh crawling into his skin, and Sokka smiled. "Approved, huh?" came the mutter. "Well, you approve. Don't you? You damn well should," she threatened. "I'm better than you at pretty much everything. And I'm hungry. So—the problem. Read it."

Heaving a sigh, Sokka faithfully intoned, "Assume that the demand curve for kayaks in Yellowstone National Park during the spring visiting season is represented by the following equation…" It took him almost three minutes to read out the whole problem. As promised, it took Toph approximately fifteen seconds—with the help of a graphing calculator—to nudge him in the direction of solving it. Typing furiously the solutions into the assignment's empty fields, he muttered, "I just don't understand how you do that. You can't even _see _the slopes—"

"Hehe, slopes."

"—and I mean, it's _hard_—"

Toph snickered again. "Hard!"

"Oh for—_really_? Mature, Toph. Super mature."

"I'm sixteen! I'm not supposed to be mature!" Burrowing her face into his neck, she sniffed and said, "But you are. So feed me. Feed me _now_."

"Are you gonna leech my neck the whole time?"

There was a pause. The dock's speakers fuzzed. From a room down the hall the squeak of a mattress sounded; the ever-present tromp of footsteps on the stairs provided a faint backbeat. "Guess not," Toph admitted finally. Her arms slithered away and she flopped backward onto his bed again, narrowly missing his pile of boxers (clean) and his gym shorts (not clean). "I want the pork flavor if you have it," demanded the girl. "And if not, chicken. And if neither of those—"

"—beef," Sokka finished. He rose. The chair clattered and he shot his best friend a thumbs up, not that she could tell. "I know, I know. Anything but vegetarian, right?"

"Long live the carnivores!" She grinned at the ceiling and cupped a hand behind either ear. "Ahem. I don't hear ramen cups crackling. What's the delay?"

"I can't move _that _fast, yeesh. Patience, young Padawan. Patience." Rifling through the various cans and shrink-wrapped foodstuffs beneath the microwave cart, Sokka located the desired noodles and brandished them high. He tore the lids off them next and, after adding water from the room's not-so-spotless sink, eased both onto the microwave's turntable side by side. "Three minutes," he supplied.

Toph smacked her lips. "Excellent." Nodding her head to the microwave's hum, she ventured, "Say, have you got a pair of clean sweatpants I can borrow? I don't want to sleep in these jeans. They're scratchy."

"You're not staying here again," disagreed Sokka. "No. Absolutely not. Your father—"

"Won't notice, so! Sweatpants?" The query came out saccharine. Toph's smile stretched wide. Quivered. She mopped at it with the hinge of her elbow and grouched, "C'mon, Sokka. Don't make me dig through your hamper. Last time I found half a sandwich in there."

"That was _not _mine, I swear." Outside a streetlight flickered, sending shadows and sparks through the blinds. Sokka bit his lip. "So," he said. "Your father. He's… he's pretty bad, huh?"

"Drunk off his ass, yeah. Like I said, he won't miss me." Toph fingered the shell of her ear. Turning her face away, she gnawed at her cheek's inside, then pushed her tongue out between her teeth and mumbled, "It's worst when it snows like this. He remembers Mom because of it, I guess—remembers her and the accident and I don't think he can stand looking at me because apparently I look more and more like she did every day, and he just…" She made a tipping motion with one hand. "You know."

"Yeah," Sokka said, even though he didn't. "Yeah, sure." He urged next, eyes flitting to the smudge on her arm, "But just because he misses her doesn't mean he has the right to treat you like he does, Toph. He should be glad you're still here—"

"He _is _glad." Toph's head rolled back toward Sokka across his rumpled sheets. She wrinkled her nose. "He is," she insisted, and went on, "but I remind him of his dead wife and it's probably, I dunno, like a ghost—the way I turn to him and don't see him, I mean, my face so familiar but with no recognition for him." Steam hissed across the microwave's door. "And anyway," she grumbled, "if him holding my arm a little too tightly or digging his fingers into my shoulder is the worst I'm ever gonna get for killing my mom, it's not altogether a terrible price to pay, is it?"

The microwave dinged. With a look of relief Toph sat up and lunged for it, but Sokka intercepted her pass and ended up with his arms tangled in hers, a knot of sinewy limbs and groping fingers. "You can't seriously blame yourself for that," he hissed. "For your mom."

"Well sure I can," Toph argued, and grunted. "I wanted to ride shotgun. I whined about it. I fucking _whined_, Sokka, and what does it matter if I ever ride shotgun, huh? I can't see anything! I can't—" She tossed him aside like he was nothing—like he was made of paper, for God's sake. He smacked into the end of his bed and yelped, clutching at his knee, and by the time he'd turned again Toph had a ramen cup jiggling from hand to hand. "Hot!" she complained. "Hot—it's hot, shit, it's hot, ow—"

"Here, c'mon. Stop that." Seizing one of his thermal socks from the pile nearby his desk, Sokka shimmied it up around the ramen cup and said, "There. Now it's insulated and it won't kill your hands."

"…is this a sock?"

"It," Sokka agreed, "is a sock."

Toph plucked at said sock, then shrugged and settled to gingerly sipping the cup's contents. Her milky eyes squinched, rolled toward Sokka. The pupils behind the cataracts seemed to twitch. "'S'good," she huffed.

"Mm." Sokka pulled his own cup from the microwave. He and Toph settled together on his bed's rumpled edge, her hip jarring his, her knee chuffed flush to his thigh. "Blaming yourself," he said at length, when the shadow of noodles in Toph's cup was down halfway. "That's—that's not healthy, you know. And you shouldn't. I mean, it wasn't your fault. You were twelve, right?"

"Eleven." _Sluuuurp_. A noodle on its way down Toph's throat smacked its end into her nostril. She grinned and chomped at it. Sokka was pretty sure velociraptors had eaten the same way.

"Yeah, see—eleven years old. You were a kid. And kids whine, Toph, right? So—"

She lifted a hand and he stopped. It was a good thing too, because she dropped that hand to his thigh and squeezed, the kneading-_unf _kind of squeeze, and Sokka had to bite his lips from the inside to keep from squeaking. "I don't need therapy, Sokka, thanks," said his best friend simply. "I had some already and hey, guess what? They did a better job than you. Not that I don't appreciate your, uh. Champion efforts here."

"But—"

"Nope. Nuh-uh. Hush." She drove a thumb hard into the soft meat of his leg, very near where it joined his torso, and he squirmed. "It's fine," she insisted. "You're right. It wasn't my fault. I wasn't driving the truck that hit us—I didn't kill her. But my dad, see, he thinks I did, even if it's just a tiny little idea nibbling around in his brain, even if he doesn't want to believe it. And it must be hard, to have to love and hate someone as much as he does me, to have to field both of those emotions at the same time. I hurt him. The sight of me actually _hurts _him, don't you get that?" Toph's breath shuddered. "So," she maintained, "if he wants to hurt me just a little too, that's okay—it's not like I'm gonna let him do it much. I mean, I'm not masochistic. But I am fair. And that's how it is."

Out of habit she leaned away and dropped her empty cup into the trash bin. The bag whispered. Passing over the remnants of his own ramen to Toph, Sokka murmured, "There's still some left." As she made quick work of the residual noodles, he ventured, "So—you got all that from therapy, huh?"

"Pfft." A white string of pasta, like a tendon, sprayed out the corner of Toph's mouth. She slurped it back up and declared, "Nah. I skipped most of the sessions. I met you around then, remember? In the park? You and your sister and Baldy."

Sokka smirked. "Yeah—hard to forget. I didn't know you were cutting out on therapy, though. Explains why your mind's so messed up now."

Toph flicked a noodle at him. For a blind kid she had pretty good aim, and as it slid down his cheek she suggested, "Bite me." And then, "Hey. Hey, Sokka. You _are _gonna let me borrow those sweatpants, right?"

"Yeah, well—'course I am." He rose and, scratching at the back of his neck, opened his wardrobe to rifle through the heaps of clothing inside. "It's snowing too hard for you to go home anyway." Once he'd found what he wanted, he tossed them back to Toph. She narrowly avoided slopping ramen juice down the proffered garment.

"That's a great idea," she snapped without any real menace. "Throw shit at the blind girl. _Perfect_." But she disposed of the ramen cup and next was wriggling out of her jeans, thrusting her hands down past the ragged hem. Sokka glimpsed a flash of scissoring white legs and jerked around. "Gotta shirt?" Toph asked. "Something soft and preferably non-Dorito-smelling?"

"What've you got against Doritos?" Obediently Sokka began to comb the closet again.

"I don't really want to show up at school tomorrow smelling like Cool Ranch. And don't even suggest showering here—the last time I tried that I walked in on Zuko and _trust me_, being blind doesn't shield me from everything."

"…okay, I'll bite." Ahah! A shirt! Sokka seized it, examined it, deemed it worthy, and turned back to Toph. "What happened?" He passed over the shirt.

Sniffing at it, Toph supplied, "Oh, you know. I walked in, he made a noise and surprised me, I turned really quickly and slipped on the floor and he tried to catch me, being all gentlemanly and stuff, and I sorta accidentally snatched off his towel and grabbed his—"

"EW stop stop _STOP_! Aw man, Toph, did you have to do the hand motions? My _eyes_!"

"My _palm_," Toph countered. "My poor virgin _palm_."

"Buuuh," Sokka opined, and squeaked next as his best friend made to peel off her shirt, "geez, Toph! A little warning next time?"

"What?" Despite that he'd turned away again, Sokka got the sense that Toph was smirking at him. "Worried you'll see a little skin? Worried you'll _like it_?"

"Don't be gross!"

"Don't be shy!" Toph admonished. "It's okay to want a little piece of the Toph!"

"Oh, you're a _the _now, are you?"

"I've always been a _the_. You're just slow on the uptake, is all." There came the sound of a strap snapping. Toph's bra flew over his head, hit his wardrobe door, and slid down to a heap on the floor. He goggled at it: it was pink satin and abhorrently lacy.

"Your bra," he managed. "It's, uh. It's pretty. Pretty feminine, I mean—not just, like, pretty-pretty. Even though it sorta is that too."

"Didn't know you were an underwear connoisseur." Toph's arms wove themselves about his waist. She pulled him back to his bed and puffed, insistent, "C'mon. Get up here. If you wanna read or something, that's cool, but you're warm and I have to get up earlier than you."

"Why don't you take Zuko's bed?"

"Uhm, because I don't want he and Mai to fall on me again in the middle of their disgusting sloppy emo makeouts, okay?"

"…point." Sokka scooted backward. Toph wormed into bed after him, dwarfed by the borrowed outfit. The sleeves of the shirt swung on her arms like banners and the sweatpants swam down her hips, revealing a slice of pink that might have meant Toph's lowers matched her uppers. Directing his eyes pointedly ceilingward, he said as she nestled into his chest and punched at his pillow, "Is you coming here all the time really okay, Toph? I mean, what do your friends—"

"You're my friend."

"Yeah, but your other—"

"Katara? Zuko? Aang?" Toph pitched her chin against his collar and grinned. "When I'm not with you I'm with them, and they know that when I'm not with them, hey, surprise, I'm with you! No one thinks I'm being taken advantage of or that you're a pedophile. So we're cool." She kicked most of his laundry off the mattress and muttered, "Shift a little. Your knee's invading my space."

"Uhm, technically? This is all _my _space. All mine. All _me_."

"Is that so?" Toph proceeded to crawl atop him. Her knees knifed down alongside his hips—her slight weight fell over him, and her elbows dug into the pillow at either of his ears. Lowering her head such that her face was inches from his, she grinned and breathed into his cheek, "I'll conquer you anytime, Sokka. Just let me know."

She dropped a kiss on his forehead and rolled back into the nest of sheets, socks, and shorts. Her ridiculous hair, freed from its customary bun, spilled over everything and tickled Sokka's elbow, and he was pretty sure he was going to be tangled in it when he woke up in the morning. "You smell like ramen," he attempted. His lips brushed her temple. Beside him she stilled, and he stopped, and across the room the music dock finally ran down its battery and shushed itself quiet.

They waited. A muscle in Toph's belly flexed against Sokka's knuckles.

But then, "You're such a shy boy, Sokka," she sighed, tucking her face down into his neck. He felt her smile, amused and exasperated, brand his skin; felt the lashes of her useless eyes graze it too. "A shy, shy boy. Goddamnit."

He said nothing. He watched her face instead, the curve of her cheek as it sloped—hehe, _sloped_—into her jaw. The shadows stippling her chin. The slow seep of tension from her neck as she slipped into sleep. Deafening, her snores fuzzed out the rest of the dorm's noise and muffled too the sound of cars on the street three levels below. Her wrist wedged itself nearby his kidney and made itself comfortable.

When he was certain she wouldn't know, Sokka did two things. First he eased up on his elbow and flicked out the lamp on his desk. Next he sidled closer and ghosted his palm over her hip, cautious—just once. She mumbled. Drooled into his shoulder. Her foot folded atop his, her hard little heel pressed tight to his ankle.

"Shit," he said fondly, and closed his eyes.


	40. Aid

**Commentary: **Quick!fic for a Friday afternoon. Five minutes. =) Hope you like it. Set just after the events of the final episode, and written to reply to a question **Kimberly T. **posted in response to an earlier one-shot: "If Toph can Bone-bend, why didn't she fix up Sokka's leg when he broke it in the final battle?"

Answer: There probably wasn't immediately time to help him, and I imagine the scene went something like this anyway…

This one's for you, Kimberly. =)

Also, halfway through! WHOO! PAR-TAY!

**Words: **550

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**Word FIFTY: Aid**

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"So, uhm." A shadow hovered by the door, ginger, pale fingers curled on the jamb. "Does it hurt?" Toph ventured.

She stepped into the room. Shoulders slumped, eyes downcast, she hesitated two paces past the threshold. She scratched at her cheek. Her toes flexed over the stone floor and Sokka, looking up from the scroll he'd been studying, shot a grin toward her. "Toph, hey!" he greeted the Earthbender. "I'll bet you can appreciate this. This schematic is fantastic—it shows all the mineral veins running through the Earth Kingdom! Come look at it; you'll like it—"

Toph didn't budge and Sokka stopped, chewing his lip. There was an uncomfortable moment of quiet.

"Yeah," the tribesman realized. "Uh. My bad."

"Does it hurt?" Toph repeated. She lifted her head and the room's quivery lamplight gave her eyes a terrible mirror shine, the kind that usually, in Sokka's experience, either meant imminent tears or a falling blade. "Your leg," she said, and moved again. Once she was near enough to touch had Sokka extended a hand, she folded herself down into a crouch and touched her temple to his knee. With one fist she tapped on the floor close to his foot. _Thock-thock-thock_.

"Oh, nah! I mean, well. Sorta?" he chanced. Her brow rose and he scooted back on his chair, trying to get a better look at her face. "It mostly itches," he clarified, and wondered next, "hey, is everything okay—"

Her arms wove around his injured leg and clenched there; his knee twinged. His ankle throbbed. As his breath wobbled out in a gasp of her name, Toph hooked her fingers in the hem of his pants and yanked at them furiously. They ripped at the seam, shredded, and then her palms were on his thigh, delving down hard to his calf. She tipped her face toward him, biting her lip so hard it looked like she might draw blood. She insisted, "You can hit me if you want."

"Why—" he managed, and she dug her fingers into the soft meat of his leg and _twisted _them, it—her fingers first, the leg next. The bone buckled under her touch, creased, crumbled and without thinking he fisted a hand in her hair, screaming, pulling—

It was over.

His vision swam. He blinked away tears and found himself hunched over Toph, who snarled into his thigh, "Bone's just earth—just minerals and I'm sorry you got hurt, okay? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but it's better now, I fixed it and—"

"What the hell is this?" a voice asked frostily from the door.

Sokka looked up. Toph's hair slicked against his palm and Suki scowled at him, a silhouette of fists on hips. "Uhm," he tried. "Toph was just—"

"Ripping off your pants?"

"Well—"

"Putting her face in your lap?"

"Listen, it's not—"

"Making you _scream_?"

Suki fondled her fan, expression murderous, as Sokka floundered. In the next moment Toph rose and, after shaking free Sokka's grip, slipped up alongside the Kyoshi Warrior. She corrected easily, "None of the above, Suki. You're seeing it way wrong here."

Sokka sagged in relief. Suki provided a hesitant smile.

Passing over Sokka's belt, Toph finished, "I was taking care of him, that's all," and left the room.


	41. Wait

**Commentary: **Sometimes certain people aren't ready to hear certain things.

**Words: **1,027

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**Word FIFTY-ONE: Wait**

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"I like thunderstorms," Sokka confided, eyes trained on the cave's mouth. Rain cascaded across the threshold in a sheet, and his only view of the outside world was the occasional tango of tree branches lit up by lightning. Shadows tattooed across the wall nearest him, like fingers grasping, and Toph shifted a little and snorted.

"I'm glad you do," she said. "I'm not fond of the noise myself. And the rain—it makes everything smell weird. Not to mention softens the ground." She scratched her nose and grouched, "Soft ground doesn't carry vibrations well. I can't see anything."

Outside an enormous clap of thunder sounded. The cave shook. Toph winced, ducking her head. The band of her arms about her knees tightened; she scooted slightly closer to Sokka, who noticed but was wise enough not to say anything about it. "The rain makes things smell weird?" he ventured.

"Yeah."

"Like… clean?" he nudged when the Earthbender made no move to provide further explanation.

Fabric rustled. She tapped her cheek with a finger. He could barely make out the motion in the dark. "You'd think that," she provided, "but no, not really. It's more like… everything's _eager_." The wind hissed around the cave's entrance, spewing rain inside. A trickle of it licked along the floor toward the Toph, who scowled, wiggled her toes, and summoned up a shelf of rock that diverted the stream off harmlessly toward their hideaway's edge. "Everything's eager," she revisited, "like—you know, wanting to prove it still exists after the rain's tried to rinse it away. Everything's doing that all at once. The flowers reek. The grass squeaks—"

"Squeaks?"

"What are you, an echo?" But she rubbed her knuckles fondly against his ankle and nodded. Another flash of lightning lit up her face and he saw, for an instant, that she was smiling. "Uh-huh. It squeaks. And not because it's being stepped on." She hesitated, then resumed slowly, "I think the grass… it's just stretching, up and up, like hundreds and hundreds of tiny little arms—I mean, the blades of grass are, you know, like arms, uhm. And—and I guess the squeaking comes from them all stretching together."

She stopped. Sokka considered, letting his eyes drift between his friend and the rain. "You're right," he allowed. "Sounds weird."

"Yeah." A frail, tapering grumble fell from the sky. "Weird," cemented Toph. With a low huff she dropped her chin onto her knees again.

The storm raged on. In his nostrils the air was chilled and damp, of course, and Sokka scratched his chin thoughtfully. "It's weird," he said after several minutes; Toph jumped—she'd been drowsing, "but it's cool too."

"Unh?" Lifting a hand, Toph scraped at her eyes with her palm's heel. "What's cool?"

"The way you perceive things." Sokka waved to the cave's entrance despite that the gesture was lost on his audience. "It's different—it's cool. I mean… it's only ever smelled wet to me after it rains, but you—"

A bright bolt of lightning lanced down very nearby the cave's mouth, followed seconds later by an enormous thunderclap. Sokka swore and Toph yelped: actually _yelped_, high-pitched and shriektastic and _girly_. It was a pity their hideaway plunged immediately back into darkness. Sokka would have liked to gape at her.

"How can you _like _that?" she exploded. Her fist smacked into his arm, not quite hard enough to hurt; he flinched back anyway. "How can you? Spirits!" she blasphemed. Her elbow tangled in his. "It's so _loud_!"

"I'm a guy," he supplied. "I like loud things. Booms. Bangs. _Explosions_—"

"Why?" came the demand, and then she was pressed against him, half because she was angry at the weather and half because, well, she was probably cold or something, Sokka reasoned. "Why does shit have to be loud to be likable? I don't understand your _reasoning_, Snoozles. Do you even have any? Reasoning? That foreign concept—"

"Things are just more awesome when they're loud," Sokka cut in before Toph could work herself into a snit. "For me they are, anyway," he defended, and went on to explain, "because it's easy to be quiet. It's easy to sit back and shut up and blend in, to be unnoticeable, and most things are like that because if they're loud—if they draw attention to themselves, I mean, there are consequences, right?"

Lightning strobed, spilling silver into the cave and slurping it back again immediately. "Consequences," Toph attempted, noncommittal. It was enough to prod Sokka to continue, though, and he did.

"Consequences," he reinforced. "Yeah. Like, if most animals are loud, they—well, they get eaten. Noticed and eaten. Chomped on, chewed up, swallowed. Down the hatch. The end—"

The Earthbender deadpanned, "Believe it or not, I understand what you're saying. I don't need more clarification. Thanks for the effort, though."

"Uh-huh. Sure. Good. But!" He thrust up an arm, eager now. "People"—another flash; Sokka squeezed his eyes shut, his world suddenly nothing but darkness and the rise and fall of Toph's ribs in his elbow—"people, yeah—when _they're _loud, they risk being ridiculed, or ostracized, or both. So it's awesome when someone doesn't _care _about that, or maybe they care but they don't let the risks stop them, and they're loud and fierce and they stand out, and they're pretty much inspirational—"

"Sokka," Toph sighed, "seriously? Inspirational?"

"Inspirational," he affirmed. "Yeah. Explosions and thunderclaps—loud things. They wash out everything else. They _command _attention. They're impossible to ignore. And when people can be like that, sure, it's inspirational. Awesome," he finished, and fell quiet.

"Great. That's… that's very manly of you. Manly in the same way a delicate flower is manly." Toph shrugged, then hedged, "So… okay. You like thunderstorms because… they command attention."

Sokka paused. After a moment he offered, "Yeah. They do. But I like them mainly because they remind me of people who do the same thing—_people _who command attention. People who're loud and awesome." He insisted, "People like y—"

"Sometimes it's actually better to shut up, Snoozles," she warned.

Thunder grumbled.

"Yeah," muttered Sokka. "Yeah, I guess so."


	42. Medicine

**Commentary:** =)

**Words: **1,000

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**Word FIFTY-TWO: Medicine**

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A spurt of pain lanced along his spine and threaded down through the back of his leg's meat, taut, sharp. He could still move it, though, and did, blowing his breath out in a slow hiss as the potential cramp faded. The muscles in his calf unclenched. "Damn," he sighed, and finished, "I hate this."

"Yeah, well, it's good for you." Toph curled her fingers tighter about his foot. Beads of sweat stood out on her pale flesh in the noonday sun, trickling close about her hairline especially. The thick mass of her hair stood puffed and wet above her headband, sodden, clotted, and with her free hand she pushed aside a trailing strand of it. It stuck to her thumb, persistent. When it refused to come free she pulled out the whole hank by the roots, flicked it aside, and went on, "Again. Lean into me."

Sokka shook his head. "I can't yet."

"Yes you can." She slapped his knee. A tendril of fire rippled through his leg and he yelped, but she bared her teeth and demanded, "Again! Lean into me! _Now_! Or—"

Her arm rose; her hand arched back, crafting the shape of a bird's wing. Her palm flexed in the sunlight, her calluses glinting hard like lumps of granite on a mountain's face. Sokka was more afraid of it than another cramp and, gasping, thrust himself into Toph's grip. His heel rolled against her elbow. She grunted, pushing back. The curve of her hip left the ground and his knee lurched, quivering—but it held.

For a moment, two, three, they shoved at one another thus, each bowed so close to the other that their brows brushed and the tips of their noses touched a little. When her pinky tapped his thigh, though, Sokka fell back again, sucking in great gulps of air. His head swam, tiny white lights shuttling across his vision.

"Okay, good." Toph's voice thudded into his perception. "Okay." She licked her lips. "But harder next time," she insisted.

Incredulous, Sokka lifted his head on his nodding neck to stare at her. Her mouth twitched, the corner drawn aloft. Was she smiling? She looked like she might be, and a part of him hated her for it.

"No," he denied, the word nearly a squawk. "No—you're crazy if you think I can—"

She blinked. It was the only warning he had before she drove the entirety of her weight into the ball of his foot a second time, her teeth a white slice in her face, her eyes turned to coin-shimmer in the sun. The healing bone in his leg creaked and Sokka bit back a scream and Toph, her nails tight over his ankle, asked sweetly, "I'm what? I'm _what_, Snoozles?"

"My leg—it hurts, please—Toph, you'll break it again, please, Spirits, please _Toph_—"

"If you don't want me to break it again, lean in _harder_." Despite that she was blind, her gaze found his and fixed there, lids lowered partway, lashes flecked with grit and sweat too. "Harder," she repeated slowly. The two syllables of the word burned, coals in her mouth, coloring her breath hot in the gust it made against his cheek. "Straighten your leg, Sokka. You can do it. _Push_."

"I hate you," panted the tribesman in answer. "Geez, Toph, I seriously _hate _you right now—"

Her hoarse bark of laughter interrupted his rant; she leered and he swallowed his anger. It simmered in his belly, sour, scalding. "Yeah?" Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself another inch forward, two. His thigh was a coil of bright agony. "You hate me, huh? How much? C'mon," she added, and crooned, "show me. _Show me_, Sokka."

The undertone of mockery in her voice coaxed his fury high. He cursed, kicking his toes out with all the force he could muster. His heel sank into her belly—her breath exploded from between her lips and her eyes bulged, twin marbles of colorless surprise. With a wheeze she rocked away from him and rolled onto her side across the hard sand, her arms clamped about her middle, her cheek tucked fast to her shoulder.

"Oh man!" Sokka tried to scrabble for her. His leg folded uselessly beneath him. "Toph! You okay? I'm sorry, I didn't mean—okay, well, I _sorta _meant to kick but not to kick _you_ and—"

She lifted a finger. Sokka fell silent.

With a grunt and a chuckle the Earthbender sat up again. "I asked for it," she allowed. Opening her hands, she requested, "Foot."

Sokka hesitated. "Uhm—"

"_Foot_," Toph commanded. Obediently the tribesman dropped his heel into her expectant palms, sweat sharp in his eyes as his best friend worked her fingers slowly up his calf, kneading away the pain in it, the pressure. Once finished, she nodded, resumed her grip on his ankle, and said, "Again. Push."

"I can't—"

"You _can_," she murmured. She lifted a hand—Sokka flinched. But, kissing her thumb, Toph touched the digit to his shin and concluded, "Really. I _know _you can."

Sokka's chest twinged harsh in its left corner. His leg was fine, though, and he pushed.

* * *

Years later, telling a story to the children of his tribe, he gestured to his leg and claimed, "And it broke, _ker-snap_! I hop-hop-hopped away and—"

"It broke?" His sister's son frowned dubiously at the limb in question. "It just, crunch, _broke_?"

Sokka smiled fondly at his nephew. "That's right."

"No way!" The youngster's mouth yawned, full of teeth seesawing all directions. "Old Bato broke his leg going after a tigerseal when he was a kid and he limps now! Why don't you?" Scowling, Tenzin sidled closer to his uncle around the fire's fringe and hedged, "Are you being _honest_?"

"Oh, as honest as the sun's bright, kid." The embers sighed. Leaning down, Sokka lowered his voice and husked, "But since you asked, I'll tell you the scary tale of Toph the physical therapist…"


	43. Cleave

**Commentary: **=) Look who isn't dead!

**Words: **645

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**Word FIFTY-THREE: Cleave**

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It tastes bitter going down, thick and salty and jagged. Glass probably looks like the flavor of this thing, this horrible almost-beverage, and Toph gasps and thrusts her head back and gulps, gulps, gulps. It splashes against her teeth and she imagines she can hear the enamel on said teeth just melting, sizzling away, _hsssssh_—thinks too that her tongue is shriveling, a wrinkled husk like the remnants of a dead flower in her skull. Another gulp. One more. It's gone then, it's done: the glass is empty and, with a wheeze, she slams it down against the bar's countertop.

"Okay," she insists. Tears roll down her cheeks, streams of them, maybe even rivers. What's the difference between a stream and a river anyway? Sweetness would know. Smearing the tears into nothing with the heel of her hand, she huffs and goes on, "Okay, _okay_. I hope every single one of you sorry bastards saw that." Licking her lips and baring her teeth, she snarls, "Anyone else in here wanna bet on me not being able to drink something? Because I think someone already—hey." Her head swivels; her arm swings out, and her finger flicks in the direction of the tavern's tender. "You. Yeah. I think you owe me some money, pal."

An awed silence stretches over the bar, which was pretty rowdy when she came in, a cluster of cursing and bawdy music and sloshing liquid. Now she could probably hear a pin hit the floor if someone dropped one, and it's a beautiful thing, the resounding echo of worship in this place's sweaty eaves. The tender trembles as he passes over a bag of coins. The little bits of metal whisper together, _tink-tink-tink_, and the man breathes when Toph's hand closes over her earnings, "The last person who tried to drink a glass of that stuff died on the second swallow and he was a grown mercenary! He was—"

"A pansy," Toph opines. She makes the purse disappear into her vest and swirls her index finger around, just once. "Another of those, then."

Toph's got good ears, and she's pretty sure she's hearing this guy blow his fair share of blood vessels. "But," the tender hisses. "But it might _kill _you—"

"Give me _another_," the Earthbender instructs, a threat in her tone now. "For the road, buddy. There's a good boy."

Reluctant, fearful feet shuffle. The tender moves away. Gradually sound blooms in the bar again, whispers, muffled oaths of admiration—but no one else tries to talk to Toph and that, hey, that's just like normal, huh? That's just the way it is.

When the tender returns with her second drink, she bolts it down—again it's glass, but the first cut's always the worst and this second slice is almost buttery, a streak of heat from chin to sternum. Leaving the cup and a coin on the counter, she hefts to her feet, flexes her toes across the floorboards: makes for the door. There is no stagger to her step—only the faintest hitch at her left knee, and it would take a friend to notice the weakness.

But her friends are gone, frittered off across the four nations doing their diplomatic work, their duties, sure, while she's stuck here alone in this stinking cesspool of a city. There's no Katara hovering at her elbow, no Aang to tease—no Sokka especially, to imbibe with and laugh with and—

Despite that it does her no good—despite that it and all the drinks in this place will never let her forget how far they are from her—Toph closes her eyes. Her head is heavy and she lets it droop—her lip curls against her teeth. In her mouth the shards of the drink linger, cutting.

She swallows them. Stepping out into the night, she limps slowly home.


End file.
